[Antennas] Dipole Matching problema

Sun Oct 31 01:52:40 EDT 2004

Bob wrote:
> personal thing, and you have to do what's best in YOUR case. (I don't
think
> it makes a damn bit of difference! If you get a direct strike from
> lightning, nothing less than a completely professional installation of >
> 10000ドル in lightning protection equipment is going to save your stuff,
> anyway.)

Hi Bob (continuing slightly off-topic from the California station who
probably doesn't experience much lightning - but your advice is always
great)
I estimated my costs at about 6,600ドル for all weather ops, but that also
includes a 5kw gen-set, deep cell batts, chargers and UPS. Except for the
backup power which I already had, the entire lightning protection system was
completed on July 7, 2004, so the costs are current. Five minutes after the
electricians cleaned up and left, the most high-intensity electrical storm
anybody remembers hit my part of Virginia Beach, with over 1,000 nearby
strikes. Two strikes were on trees within 30' of my antennas and hundreds
were "close". By the end of summer, another 3 strikes within 100' had
occurred, that I knew of. Pretty safe to say that the surge protection
design for AC power and coaxial entry points was well done. Hopefully I will
never know if I'm really protected from a direct strike, but that was the
design anyway.
I cracked up at your comment about witchcraft and bad advice. I probably
read a thousand pages of bad amateur advice, and lent my ears to hours of
real sages in the amateur community ;-). But I was fortunate to have the
donated professional engineering services of a fellow-boater who knew this
was coast guard work. He just wouldn't take my money, but I am convinced
after a year of studying this, that his was the most important, and easily
worth the 10% of project cost that they typically earn.
Here is the website of this project, with heavily opinionated comments about
the evils of standard MOV power strips. I have personal knowledge of many
stations who lost everything while using them. Of course they did other
things wrong too, but I think there is enough scientific evidence for radio
operators to ban such devices from their property.
http://members.cox.net/pc-usa/station/grounding.htm
73,
Jack Painter