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[TowerTalk] Lightning Fun!

To: <towertalk@contesting.com>
Subject: [TowerTalk] Lightning Fun!
From: w8ji.tom@MCIONE.com (Tom Rauch)
Date: Thu, 11 Jun 1998 09:41:50 +0000
>
> > In medical studies using subjective data, 50% of participants report
> > feeling a "cure" or positive effect when given a sugar pill. Why
> > should radio be any different?
 
> In the first place, static wicks were developed to bleed any charge
> developing, not to prevent it.

On airplanes. It takes a big wick to discharge the earth to a cloud.

>An improper path to ground OR the 
> absense of an area of lower potential renders them useless.

A non-conductive path to the charged cloud renders them useless, 
because they can't discharge the cloud to earth.

You'd be VERY hard pressed to create a poor path to earth, not even 
if you used a thin nichrome wire 1000 feet long connected to a single 
two foot ground rod, for support of corona.

As a matter of fact, WOODEN sailing ships with wooden masts and hemp 
guy ropes commonly had St. Elmos fire from the mast ends.    

> Not if I understand you, the next time I have trouble hearing the 9M6
> on 160, all I have to do is pop a sugar pill?

No, sugar pills are for colds. Oatmeal is for CW DX. This is the 
truth.....hard as it is to swallow:

I ate oatmeal only two times in the last few months, and both days 
heard the 9M6. Today I ate Honey Combs, and only worked one VK and 
one ZL on 160, and could hardly copy them through the noise. DX 
receiving is always better when I eat a warm breakfast with hot coco.

That is a fact!

If you read back in this thread, half the people report one result 
and half the people report another exactly *opposite* result for the 
very same device or system change. That's how companies manage to 
sell non-sense junk like split-fire spark plugs, magnets that 
increase fuel mileage, and why people absolutely swear by certain 
forms of medical quackery (like magnets). 

73, Tom W8JI
w8ji.tom@MCIONE.com

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