Telephone companies that have a lot of drop wire hanging on poles will
tell you lighting damage to the drop wire which feeds from the telephone open
wire or cable is rather common. The drop wire consists of 18 or 19 gauge
copper covered steel wire in a rubber covering. A lighting strike will
vaporize the coppersteel wire as we called it leaving the rubber insulation
intact requiring all of the drop wire to be replaced. Working for the phone
company I had access to lots of unused or abandoned telephone drop wire. It
looked very similar to 75 ohm feed line so I was using it to feed my 160
meter dipole with over 200 feet of drop wire. It worked great but one night I
tried to load up the dipole but it would not load. It did not take long to
find out my long telephone drop was missing the coppersteel wire. I dont know
when it was hit maybe when I was gone. Another time my Inverted L made up
of copper steel 18 gauge wire and it vaporizing the wire from a direct hit
on the tree it was tied to. My neighbor was looking out the window at the
time said my house was a fireball of sparks when that wire vaporized. I
learned years ago to always disconnect not only your antenna but also the
AC power when a close lighting strike came in on the AC power and went to
ground through my radio burning it out. I have been hit several times a
couple times my remote 160/80/40 meter vertical antenna switch with vacuum
relays located at the tower was destroyed by lighting but nothing came in the
house as both the antennas and AC was disconnected. I would not advise
using telephone drop wire to feed your antennas wires unless more research on
the impedance is done. It did work for me on Top band but when I tried to
feed a 17 meter dipole with that drop wire it did not work. Jim W0NFL
Anyone else have this happen? My copperweld #14, that clearly has arc
> pitting where it passed over other wires, shows no damage other than the
> arc
> pits. The cad-steel fence wire must get so hot it just vaporizes. I can't
> even find any pieces of it
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UR RST IS ... ... ..9 QSB QSB - hw? BK
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