Lightning strikes
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These pictures show the fallacy or myth that simply disconnecting an antenna makes a This damage illustrates why wide or heavy bonding conductors are necessary,
This is the strike area, the top of a tree. It actually blew the tree top apart.
The path down the tree blew bark off.
At the root, the lightning blew a big hole in the dirt.
A standard letter size paper fits the hole.
The path from the tree went over about 20-30 feet to the antenna. It looked like a large mole At the center bottom the soil is lifted like a big mole tunnel! This, very clearly, was not a hit on the antenna itself. The lightning path was
Below the Beverage antenna, lightning made another hole in the soil. The arc actually melted the #14 (This is a temporary splice to keep the wire out of the way while the bad You can see the melted ends. About a foot of wire was missing, and the This area of the antenna was about eight feet above ground, suspended in open
This is the antenna feedpoint, about 200-300 feet from the melted area. The explosion actually expanded the metal box!! A melted area around the antenna washer is visible. This washer forms an
This inside of the box looked like an M-80 went off inside.
The coaxial cable remained good. The isolated transformer windings and This shows why disconnecting an antenna will not protect A similar problem repeated in early June 2012 on one antenna, and on July This is the first this has happened to me in ~50 years as a Ham with long
Entrance Grounds |