That sounds like his ground system wasn't adequate to handle the surge. You need to have a distributed ground system on your tower. And I guess that's another reason to have all your grounds tied tog
Lee, Dug out an old textbook from my antenna class in college (Antenna Theory and Design by Stutzman and Thiele). On page 250 of the book they are discussing full wave loop antennas. "The square loop
I thought about this some more. I bet he did not have his shack ground and tower grounds connected. I wouldn't say the lightning "traveled through the ground and up into his shack again." Rather, whe
I have a friend who just put up a Prosistel rotor. It's one of the smallest they make (second smallest one). It is a BEAUTIFUL rotor. There is ZERO and I mean ZERO play in it. While I can wiggle my H
You are absolutely right. If it is a guyed tower, most of the stress at the base will be a compression force. Very little if any lateral forces on the concrete as these are all taken up by the guys.
Jason, First mistake: Going to the city to get a permit for a roof tower. If you were going to put up a small roof tripod for a TV antenna would you get a permit? Likely not. I've said this many, man
Not a bad way to do it, but what about water and moisture collecting under the plywood? I think you are in CA so you don't likely get as much rain as we do here and I certainly don't think you have t
Jason, This sounds like a good plan. I agree completely with the idea of running long bolts into the 2x8's across the joists. Frankly, install 2x8's as long as you can possibly get into your attic. L
It's not ideal, but it can be worked around. Just make sure you don't have any sharp bends. I made this mistake and while I haven't been hit, it's best not to have any. A sharp bend looks like a high
Yeah, it's all about where the potential can build up. Like I said, if you can make your antenna/tower look as much like ground as possible and prevent any charge from building up on it, you are less
UGH! Any object in the air is a potential target. Both sides of your dipole are. While the side of the dipole which is connected to ground is at or near, RF Ground, there is still a rather inductive
It depends on your antenna itself. Many antennas are DC grounded. Some are not. DC Ground and RF Ground are two very different things, by the way. You ensure your antenna is properly grounded/protect
Hence my comments that just following "code" is not always best. My niece's husband is a civil engineer. When he saw the way we were building my deck this summer he said it was overkill. I wouldn't g
It is more complex than that. But there's two elements of protection. One is trying to prevent a strike in the first place. The second is what to do with the strike energy if one does occur. I will n
I am really skeptical of this statement. I have done a great deal amount of sailboat racing on yachts up to 50 feet over the last 10 years. I've been on three Chicago-Mackinac and one Port Huron-Mack
Agreed, Phil. Yeah, the one handed bowline trick is pretty cool. The only thing I thought of is looking at the type of load applied to the knot. In sailing, we generally have pretty static (albeit la
You're right! When we did my tower, we guyed it around 25 feet for the first set. The next set was going to be at approximately the 50 foot level. The day we put the top sections up, we had 2 excelle
Go to: http://www.rohnnet.com/rohnnet2001/catalog/pdfs/25G/25G-9.pdf That should give you a nice indication of proper heights. It's all in feet but you should be able to translate to metric. Well, N4
I am going to take a stab at this, but perhaps I will not be 100% correct. The "live" end of the cable has the majority of the forces on it. It has much greater tension on it than the dead end of the
That's not correct. I used them on my new setup since they were considerably cheaper than big grips. The grips are certainly easier and quicker. 73, Jon NA9D -- Jon Ogden NA9D (ex: KE9NA) Citizen of