As Dale stated Polyphaser is the way to go guys. As to the RISK. I live in Northern Indiana where thunder and lightning are common many times per year. I have three towers with the top antenna at 175 foot level. Trees here barely make it to 70 feet. So I am IT. There is no DISCONNECT during such storms. If I ever disconnected this station it would take a couple weeks to do so. Longer to reconnect it. 5 rotors on the three towers. Twenty Aluminum Yagi antennas for 40-10 meters plus numerous wire antennas. Relay control lines to switch all this stuff.
After a rather nasty strike back in 1988 when I first installed a good share of this stuff. Insurance claim was close to 10K. Insurance company said: We don't want you. We did find an Assigned Risk Company who took us. They said 90 days to either get all that stuff on the ground or install a commercial ground system. Yes its lots of work and no its not cheap but let me tell you it does WORK. As Dale stated the Tower has been direct hit many times since 1988. Nothing is ever disconnected. Zero Damage has happened. Yes there are 100 ground rods buried in my yard. Yes they are connected by 1200 feet of copper 3/8" ID Tubing. It has a lower inductance per foot than 2 inch wide copper strap. Plus its cheaper. Same stuff as used to hook up AC systems with. I thought I owned STOCK in Polyphaser for a while. Contesters maybe used to recognize my callsign K9UWA and today they will recognize K9NW Mike as he operates the station in many contests. All with today one little K3 radio. I operate it remotely during the winters from Florida myself. so YES you can protect your whole station if you are willing to spend a little money and do a little WORK. Certainly beats the alternative of trying to find all the things that are messed up after Mother Nature takes its course. The expense really isn't all that great when compared to the cost of the radios, amplifiers, computers, TV sets, refrigerators and other things that are blown up by the lightning hits. It is a scary spectacular display when the tower is hit just after dark. Once it happened when we had a birthday party here with about 40 friends present. About 1/2 of them were Hams. I think some needed a change of underwear afterwards. John k9uwa John Goller, K9UWA & Jean Goller, N9PXF Antique Radio Restorations k9...@arrl.net Visit our Web Site at: http://www.JohnJeanAntiqueRadio.com 4836 Ranch Road Leo, IN 46765 USA 1-260-637-6426 ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
