Re: [amsat-bb] Lightening and mast mounted preamps

[Glenn Little WB4UIV <glennmaillist@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 02:00 AM 3/9/03 -0600, Robert Oler wrote:
>Hello Jon (and others)
>
><<The thread of lightning protection comes up quite a bit on the Towertalk
>reflector (towertalk@contesting.com).  There's a LOT that many hams do not
>do.
<snip a lot>

I have to agree with the absolute grounding. I worked for a company that 
made tower site monitoring equipment, this included the lights. I had to 
visit a number of sites. When Motorola owned their site, they had a pretty 
good program of grounding. Their sites took little or no lightning damage. 
When Pinnacle bought these sites, well, thing got to where they were not so 
pretty. Pinnacle owns vertical real estate. They provide a place to put 
your equipment and your antenna. If you want to protect your equipment that 
is yours to do. No there is not a ground system here, we just provide the 
vertical real estate. I have seen sites that the person that installed the 
paging transmitter thought that he had to use all of the #6 copper he was 
sent and did not cut the 25 foot length of ground wire. The excess was 
coiled up behind the paging transmitter. This same person ran the inch and 
a quarter hardline through the ground window (did not cut anything off the 
provided hardline). He placed the surge protection at the top of the 
transmitter, not at the ground window as is customary. This allowed 
lightning into the building subjecting the other users to lightning damage. 
This is just one of the horror stories that I have seen. Absolute groung is 
good, anything less is a waste of time and money because it does not do any 
good.

73
Glenn
WB4UIV



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