7/25/05
Well
its been about 30 years since I got a direct hit by
lightning but it happened again this Friday.
Luckily I had removed my new SC-237 antenna tuner from the 130 ft
inverted L antenna a couple days prior (lightning
had got it a week earlier but not a direct hit).
I had removed it and clipped the inverted L directly to the ground rods
and radial ground system. All I was
able to find was about a foot of the antenna.
It was made from military field wire (mixture
of copper and steel).
I
lost NIC cards in 4 of my network PC's, I lost a
router, and a switch. My phone line
2 was out. I found that half of the
light circuits in the house were out because of a tripped breaker.
I just knew that the radio gear had to be OK because I always keep the AC
unplugged and I keep the antenna lead from the radio disconnected from the
antenna switch. I turned on the Kenwood
TS-570 last night and noticed that there was no sound.
Looks like the s-meter works and the transmitter works.
I found that I had a phone patch connected from my line 2 to the speaker
of the ts-570. So guess that gave lightning
a path.
I have attached a few pictures. In one of them you can see an insulator that is hanging from my tree in the front yard. It has 1” of antenna left on it. I used the field wire on the back side of the insulator to go over the tree limb and to tie off on the tree. The next picture you can see where I had it tied to the tree. It is smoked and lighting ran straight down the tree ripping off the bark. The last picture shows that the tree was just dis-colored at the very bottom of the tree as lightning went into the ground.
I
believe I got the old triple wammy.
It cam in the power, the phone line, and in the
antenna. This is my lucky day. Now I know I should be good
for another 30 years. (maybe even longer if you
believe lightning never hits the same place twice)
Tom, WA5KUB
