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June 6th 05, 01:04 AM

wrote:

I don't want to start a pising contest, but you might want
to visit a local TV or radio station. They take lightning
hits all the time and very seldom have anything more then a
sec or 2 of off air to show for it.

Really? A friend of mine makes over half his income from repairing
lightning damaged radio stations here in Florida. While I was the
engineer at WACX TV lightning hit their studio building in Leesburg
Florida. It took ot the entire telephone system, the main computer, all
the terminals, all the LNAs on the C-band dish, most of the receivers
and the 11 GHZ CARS transmitter that fed the original transmitter site.
It took months to repair everything, including replacing the vaporized
grounding system. true, if you're in an area that rarely get nearby
lightning strikes, but there have been storms here with over 1100
strikes in 30 minutes. The continuous EMP weakens things, and there are
a lot of failures because of this. I lost all three video amps in a
computer monitor when lightning hit the water behind my workshop. It
wasn't plugged in, and the video cable was wrapped around the tilt
stand, yet enough voltage was induced into the cable to blow a crater in
the video amp chips. A battery powered digital thermometer hanging on
the wall exploded. The IC was vaporized and a hole burnt in the circuit
board. In truth, there is little that can be don to protect you from a
direct lightning strike. AM radio towers have a huge spark gap at the
base to protect the insulator, but damage to the antenna system are
common. Also, a lot of stations have a spare transmitter that's already
hot, so they can switch over and get back on the air, "In a couple
seconds"

--
Former professional electron wrangler.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

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