My experience is that lightning can be managed, to a point. A direct strike
to your tower can be catastrophic. I suffered one on May 9. My daughter
lives about 600 feet away and witnessed the strike. She said sparks flew in
all directions. My losses are huge. I am working with the insurance
company, and expect the total damage to be well in excess of $50K. There is
evidence that high voltage appeared on the tower, power lines, phone lines
(fiber) and even on my wi-fi connection from the house to the shack. Every
gigabit switch was toasted, and every PC connected was blown. Another big
loss was two large screen TVs, both connected to internet via gigabit
switches. Repairs were successful by replacing the power supplies.
All this, plus my main two stations, both with Yaesu FTDX9000D and Alpha
87A, are gone. Coax was not even connected because I had just reconfigured
the station and had not completed the coax switching section. However,
units were plugged into power, and the Yaesu transceivers were connected to
the PCs.
73, Keith NM5G
-----Original Message-----
From: TowerTalk <towertalk-bounces@contesting.com> On Behalf Of Jim Brown
Sent: Wednesday, September 4, 2019 3:45 AM
To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Grounding
On 9/3/2019 2:47 PM, RCM wrote:
> Go here and download the R56 document.
Note that 1) this is a procedural document for VHF/UHF repeater sites;
2) it's written for industrial budgets; 3) these sites are usually on
mauntaintops, where soil conductivity is generally quite poor, 4) it's 99.9%
about lightning protection; and 5) I'll bet it's got of lot of overkill to
prevent any legal challenges.
That said, lighting is a bad motha, and cares not a whit about any of the
above. :) I haven't read the document, but the most important fundamentals
are about BONDING EVERYTHING!
I once had an HF station at a decommissioned AT&T Long Lines site Microwave
on a mountaintop in Nor Cal that my friend owns, and I had the opportunity
to study the documentation for station grounding (it was built in the '50s).
This is an area with terrible soil conductivity, and it's all about bonding.
The tower is about 150 ft tall, 32 ft square at the base, 24 ft square at
the top, and originally had a bunch of BIG dishes and BIG feedline, some of
which has been removed to make room for antennas for other systems.
73, Jim K9YC
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
TowerTalk mailing list
TowerTalk@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk
_______________________________________________
_______________________________________________
TowerTalk mailing list
TowerTalk@contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk
|