Lightning and Antennas

[Deleted User 15924]

Okay hams. During a thunderstorm, do you take your feed line off your equipment? And if you do, do you leave the connectors hanging in free air, or tie both sides to ground?

[HD74]

Ground your antenna.
Use a lightning arrester on each line, ground it per instructions.
Lightning can be way closer than you think, by the time you see it, it is too late to start touching coax.

[Turkeytop]

I'm not a ham, but when there's a threat of lightning I disconnect my antenne and short out both sides.

Also, I disconnect from AC.

[TC Talks]

One of my clients lost a pricey production board from a strike that came down the POE port. Lightening will go where it pleases. There is even debate that lightening rods and arrestors are not a guarantee.

I was in a station when the adjacent tower was hit. The owner neglected to replace the lightening ball and the juice came down the transmission line and into the engineering room. It blew out light bulbs and fried many things. Luckily, I was insulated on the porcelain thrown at the time.

[Deleted User 15924]

I'm not a ham, but when there's a threat of lightning I disconnect my antenne and short out both sides.

Also, I disconnect from AC.

Are you shorting the two sides together? Or connecting both sides to a ground?

[k8jd]

I have several feedlines coming into the radio room, I just disonnect the coax from the main antenna coax switch to the new Icom radio . do not put your Coax into a bucket of water !!
I have a forest of tall trees above my antennas, they get hit first !

[syntheticexctasy]

I'm of the general mindset that because my antenna farm is attached to an outbuilding with a metal roof, no matter what I do if I take a strike it's going to suck.

That being said, if I have fair warning I simply disconnect coax cables - however I assume after lightning has traveled miles to get here, it'll "find it's way in" somehow no matter what. I don't believe any lightning arrestor on the planet will stop/reroute a direct strike completely.

There are taller things around me, hopefully that diminishes my risk slightly.

[Turkeytop]

Probably nothing will defend against a direct hit. But a nearby strike could induce a strong electrical pulse int the antenna that could be bypassed to ground if we take precautions.

[k8jd]

More About Grounding
Before I retired , I spent some years traveling to radio comm / microwve sites around the state. Many had 300-500 ft towers next to the shelter building. I saw lightning come in thru phone lines, power lines but never thru the antennas. I saw one antenna blown apart but the radio equipment was untouched. Probably because the discharge went right into the tower and to ground.
There is a thick book about how the sites are laid out and how to do site grounding, this is a GROUNDING BIBLE that had to be followed to the letter. BECAUSE we protect , maybe Over $100,000 in electronics in those shelters ! The system is designed to run 24/7/365 ! Any faults are alarmed at a central station and they call a tech that is in on-call rotation. .
I have a thousand dollar radio that I just disconnect from antennas When I hear those lightning crackles getting loud and frequent. !