On Mon, 27 Jul 2009, Peter Laws wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 00:51, Christopher E. Brown<cbrown@woods.net> wrote:
>
>> Driving along the street I happened to spot a copperweld longwire leaving
>> one house running up the hill and decided to talk to the owner.
>
> So this was static discharge from the SWL's longwire??
Yep, 300 foot plus longwire was well insulated, with least insulated point
being the approx 1/8 inch gap between the centerpin and body/nut of the
RCA thru-chassis antenna jack. The last 100 feet or so comes down the
back side of the hill (on my side of the ridge) and is line of sight and
faily well aligned with my vertical. (Think 32ft vertical vertical, and
100 foot section of wire tipped away at 45 degrees about 500 feet line of
sight away).
I am still surprised, my idea of talking to the owner of the antenna was
to see if they had the same noise issue. It was not until he was showing
off his setup and I head the "vap....vap" noise and say that the antenna
was not DC grounded I realized. The SWL is older with a bit of hearing
loss, the noise from the arcing was below his threshold, so he only
noticed the loud pops from the speaker.
Surprising how much RF a 1/8 inch arc every 10 - 60 seconds can make when
it involves a large antenna.
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