grounding and surge

http://www.polyphaser.com/ppc_ptd_home.aspx
Is a good place to start.

Good protection won't be cheap. And according to some
who live in FL, the strikes there are intense enough to
defeat even good protection.

I have survived on direct strick that vaporised coax and
antenna, and several near by strikes that took out nearby
trees with no damage.

Good protection will also require a good, low resistance
ground. Not a casual project.

Terry

Move to the desert.

I have whole-house protection as well as individual surge protectors
and/or UPS units on each and every one of my electronic components.
These certainly offer adequate protection except, of course, against a
direct lightning strike such as a "bolt from the blue," for which there
is no advance warning. (My antennas are all indoor types; my main
antenna, a Wellbrook ALA330S, is mounted in my attic. So these antennas
do not have to be physically disconnected from my radios during a storm
as it is imperative to do with outdoor ones.)

Even so, when my equipment is not in actual use, everything is
unplugged (including the power supply to the Wellbrook antenna). I have
written about this, and its importance, before. While it may seem a
"pain" to unplug all the time, believe me, you soon get used to it and
the peace-of-mind it affords makes it well-worth the small effort
required.

Best,

Joe

Thanks !

"finalquest" <final...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:ZWGHe.12647$oZ....@newsread2.news.atl.earthlink.net...

absolutely, with ultra-high-speed-cams you can actually see it...

John

<cuh...@webtv.net> wrote in message
news:8749-42F...@storefull-3252.bay.webtv.net...

There's a strike in each direction, no?

Why is a 'whole house' protector effective? If it makes a
short connection to earth, then the protector is doing as Ben
Franklin demonstrated in 1752. What do plug-in protectors
(especially APC) forget to mention to sell their grossly
overpriced and undersized protectors? Earth ground. What did
r2000...@hotmail.com define when he was discussing effective
protection? Earth ground. What did the utility customer
service rep (who probably has no experience with what another
division of the utility deals with often) not mention?
Earthing.

Take the money mostly wasted on plug-in protectors to
address the one component required in every protection system
- earth ground. First and foremost, every incoming utility
must make a connection to the same earthing point when
entering a building. This connection is either using a direct
hardwired connection (ie CATV, satellite dish) or via a 'whole
house' protectors (AC electric and telephone). The telco
already installs a 'whole house' protector for free. How
effective is it? What kind of earth ground did you provide
for the telco to connect to?

Notice CATV has no protector nor is a protector needed. A
connection to earth ground is via a hard wire. No protector
required because that wire does the same function.

This figure from the NIST demonstrates why improperly
earthed incoming utilities result in fax machine damage. Even
the protectors are not effective. Why? Earthing defines
protection (or in this case, lack of protection):
http://www.epri-peac.com/tutorials/sol01tut.html

A surge protector is only as effective as its earth ground.
Earthing (not a protector) is the protection. Those who
promote the protector instead of earth ground clearly don't
know why or what makes protectors effective. Better spent
money is on the earthing system; not on undersized,
overpriced, and ineffective plug-in protectors.

"w_tom" <w_t...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:42F05C95...@hotmail.com...

If your building does not, at minimum, meet post 1990
National Electrical Code (NEC) requirements, then sufficient
earthing may exist. Connection to cold water pipe is no
longer sufficient to earth for human safety reasons. Earthing
for transistor safety typically exceeds what the NEC requires.

Distance to that earth ground is critical. Plug-in 'shunt
mode' protectors are too far from earth ground; not
sufficiently earthed to provide secondary protection.
Therefore those ineffective (and so grossly undersized)
protectors avoid all discussion about earthing.

Earthing a building is for secondary protection. Also
inspect earthing for your primary protection:
http://www.tvtower.com/fpl.html

Ham radio operators would disconnect the antenna, place the
antenna lead inside a mason jar, and still suffer damage.
Disconnecting alone was not sufficient protection. Damage
stopped when the antenna lead was earthed. Do as Ben
Franklin demonstrated in 1752. Give the surge a
non-destructive path to earth. Lightning rods and 'whole
house' protector; both do same. Earth before lightning can
enter a building.

Only dumbass hams, and some CBers did that stunt. About a
stupid trick...Like a little glass bottle is going to stunt a
strike that traveled a few miles in *air* to get there...
When I ground out my feedlines, it's to a good ground, and
is totally outside. When I take a strike, or even a close
non direct strike, you can hear those feed to ground
connections arc, even though they are connected by
so-239's/pl-259's. I've never had any trouble using that
method, and I've had two direct strikes to my mast in the last
4-5 years. My mast directs most of the energy to ground,
but you still have some current on the lines that needs to be
cleaned up. You sure don't want to run it into the house... :(
If the coax is elevated, and not snubbed to ground at any
point, the strike potential at the end of the feedline will be
*HUGE*. Disaster city... That much potential can travel halfway
across a house looking for ground. Usually will seek plumbing,
toilets, etc. I've heard of toilets being blown to bits in a case
like that.
MK

and no leaders find it, you ain't gonna have a strike. So it takes
both ends to make a strike. Saying it starts at the bottom is semi
misleading, to me anyway...It really goes both ways, and they meet
in the middle to complete a strike. Or thats the way I see it...
But, the streamer does form first of the two, so I guess that would
make it seem to start at the bottom... MK

The point of that post was overlooked. If they were using
mason jars, well, what year do were they learning how to
protect from lightning? 1920? Effective protection (by using
techniques far more reliable than disconnecting) has been that
well understood for that long. Yet even in an internet age,
myths still claim that effective protection is disconnecting.
Disconnecting can help IF humans are sufficiently reliable
(which they are not). Disconnecting was still not sufficient
when damage occurred almost 100 years ago. And yet still
myths about disconnecting continue.

Effective protection by earthing is always working; 24/7/52
weeks every year.

Earthing is what plug-in protectors forget to mention to
sell their ineffective and excessively profitable products.
Disconnecting is not sufficient especially when effective
protection is so easy, so reliable, and so inexpensive.

You must have something else on what passes for a brain in your doggie debutante
world. Brass, bronze and similar metal are electrically conductive. Being
ferrous is not a condition needed for conductivity.

magnetic mike II

> magnetic mike II

AKA the "Man of Steel"?

Indeed w_tom makes the best point about protection -- only a single
point ground for ALL points in a system in which all are tied together
and utilize a single point for a collective ground is effective. Damage
is (and will) be done if there is ANY means for a potential to vary in a
system. In other words, ALL points must rise and fall at the same time.
Current flows when there is a difference in two points in a system. My
radio tower is 65' high and located in west central Florida, aka
Lightning Capital of the US. After a strike to the foundation of my home
3 years ago, which literally blew ceramic tiles off the concrete slab
and turned them to shattered glass shards, and blew a 3 inch deep, 2
inch wide chasm some 5 feet long into the concrete, I undertook to make
certain I was safer. The strike did not hit my tower...it actually
struck the telephone equipment point 90 away in the front of my home.
The measures I took are on my web page: http://www.knology.net/~res0958z/

Bill
KC9CS

Nah..more like 'Ferrous Beuller' on one of his days off. I can easily leap over
loose change lying on the floor.

mike

Alright, I admit it...I laughed out loud.

"B. Otten" <nom...@nomail.com> wrote in message
news:69a5f$42f19459$1860210a$12...@KNOLOGY.NET...

Awesome work, Bill. Minor quibble about the terminology - "single point
ground". Your diagram looks like a multi-point ground system in a star-star
and daisy chain. I agree with the objective of trying to minimise the
potential difference across the area being protected and that implies good
conductivity into the earth for enormous currents. That is accomplished by
providing lots of contact with the soil and the soil should be deep and wide
and conductive. Instead of ground rods, I recall seeing some Australian
research decades ago into the use of wire mesh and radials. Rocks, desert
and permafrost present special problems.

Tom