Even though I'm not a ham, my collection of shortwave radios, scanners and roof mounted antennas are just as vulnerable to a nearby lightning strike as a direct hit. Here in Santa Fe the monsoon season is upon us where at any moment a thunderstorm can suddenly appear. I turn off the radios and unplug everything the first time I hear thunder. Last month the electricity was knocked out by a storm, I used batteries on the scanner to monitor the radio traffic. It's good to be prepared even a little paranoid if you live in area prone to thunderstorms like Arizona and New Mexico. Good information here, thanks for the reminder.
Learned that lesson the hard way. In June of 1969 I was given a brand-new Petersen Radio RM-4 for my 15th birthday (it's something of a collector's item today). I used it as a dedicated WWV monitor. Was at school that September when a surprise thunderstorm moved through the valley. As they were fairly uncommon in that part of Utah, I went to school that day thinking nothing about disconnecting my radio gear. Well, when I came home from school the RM-4 was toast with even sections of circuit-board traces blown off. Never made that mistake again!
Just make sure to unhook before the storm not during because that wud be more dangerous than leaving it hooked up and don't forget to re hook before transmitting lol
I almost got struck by lightning 30 plus years ago when I was living in Florida and at that time I was working on a metal charter fishing boat and my boss told me lets get off the boat and maybe not 5 minutes after we got off the sailboat right across got hit by lightning and it blew the antennas off and blew almost every electronic equipment up. I also remember a family friend of my brother's dad telling me that his house got struck by lightning and blew most of the electronics in his house like the intercom system and stuff. and it may have fried some of his radios since he was a ham operator back in the 80's and he had basically a 4 post radio tower on his property that went probably 100 feet or so. He also had big transmitters too I think they were either collins or rca or something these were like some of the old transmitters you saw in am broadcast transmitter sites.
Make sure you disconnect all USB lines from radios to control computers, many forget to disconnect the data lines which winds up frying your computers an everything connected to that computer. All of your house wiring will act as an antenna and will result in a massive EMP pulse that will take out your home electronics. I have had a nearby strike that resulted in arcing in one’s of my wall outlets! Not a good feeling. In another incident had a bolt hit a pine tree a block over and it set off the home alarm system for a brief moment. These were nothing compared to the hit we took back in the sixties. We had a 200 foot tower for my fathers VHF business band radio situated next to the 200foot deep water well. Not a good setup. As luck would have it the storm had passed and we got hit by a "bolt out of the blue". Let’s see damage report, an brand new GE TPL base station fried, multi bay antenna toast, the deep water well pump toast as well as the controller for it ( the cover blown off of the box and the motor start capacitor a spiral of smoking paper in basement) several clock radios and a bunch of light bulbs burnt to a crisp with the candle on top of the cake being the twin aircraft marker light on top of the tower burnt as well (only thing that remained were the two brass bases in the sockets and a bunch of glass beads in the housing). A very costly strike insurance did not cover a bit of the damage. A double hit came after buying a new base station, another GE TPL line base is that the FCC decided to go to 5 KHz deviation from the then standard 15 KHz deviation standard of the time. Not only the base station but five mobile radios were worthless.
As a "newbie General", only 2 years into ham radio, I've invested a lot of my funds in getting the equipment I wanted to advance in the hobby. I'll do whatever it takes to protect my shack. Keeping my eye on the weather at all times and disconnecting all of the equipment is one of them.
We use lightning maps to keep any eye. There's also a few apps that can notify you if theres a stike within x amount of miles. Arizona probably has the most lightning out of all places. I try to be very proactive
The ground wire(green) of your plug is an Equipment Ground). Its only purpose is to create a dedicated low resistance path to allow your breaker in your main panel to trip when there is a ground fault. This equipment. Ground is bonded in your panel to the neutral current carrying conductor. The bond assures the breaker will trip. A ground rod or buried water pipe may or may not provide enough conductance depending on your soil. If all your equipment has individual conductors to the same ground point (dedicated ground rod) you will have lightning protection A ground rod may or may not
I wasn't home and my radio was on, storm came through and lighting hit 200 feet away, all the gear survived...... Lucky day. (Was a couple hours ago btw 😬)
Even though I'm not a ham, my collection of shortwave radios, scanners and roof mounted antennas are just as vulnerable to a nearby lightning strike as a direct hit. Here in Santa Fe the monsoon season is upon us where at any moment a thunderstorm can suddenly appear. I turn off the radios and unplug everything the first time I hear thunder. Last month the electricity was knocked out by a storm, I used batteries on the scanner to monitor the radio traffic. It's good to be prepared even a little paranoid if you live in area prone to thunderstorms like Arizona and New Mexico. Good information here, thanks for the reminder.
Learned that lesson the hard way.
In June of 1969 I was given a brand-new Petersen Radio RM-4 for my 15th birthday (it's something of a collector's item today). I used it as a dedicated WWV monitor. Was at school that September when a surprise thunderstorm moved through the valley. As they were fairly uncommon in that part of Utah, I went to school that day thinking nothing about disconnecting my radio gear. Well, when I came home from school the RM-4 was toast with even sections of circuit-board traces blown off.
Never made that mistake again!
Just make sure to unhook before the storm not during because that wud be more dangerous than leaving it hooked up and don't forget to re hook before transmitting lol
I didn’t have ocd till I watched this ! Lol I’m impressed with your collection
Had to do the same earlier today when the storms moved in from your area in to CA,
I almost got struck by lightning 30 plus years ago when I was living in Florida and at that time I was working on a metal charter fishing boat and my boss told me lets get off the boat and maybe not 5 minutes after we got off the sailboat right across got hit by lightning and it blew the antennas off and blew almost every electronic equipment up. I also remember a family friend of my brother's dad telling me that his house got struck by lightning and blew most of the electronics in his house like the intercom system and stuff. and it may have fried some of his radios since he was a ham operator back in the 80's and he had basically a 4 post radio tower on his property that went probably 100 feet or so. He also had big transmitters too I think they were either collins or rca or something these were like some of the old transmitters you saw in am broadcast transmitter sites.
I am in northern Az. As well and yes the lightning is bad, i should do more to protect them, hi, hi.
Make sure you disconnect all USB lines from radios to control computers, many forget to disconnect the data lines which winds up frying your computers an everything connected to that computer. All of your house wiring will act as an antenna and will result in a massive EMP pulse that will take out your home electronics. I have had a nearby strike that resulted in arcing in one’s of my wall outlets! Not a good feeling. In another incident had a bolt hit a pine tree a block over and it set off the home alarm system for a brief moment. These were nothing compared to the hit we took back in the sixties. We had a 200 foot tower for my fathers VHF business band radio situated next to the 200foot deep water well. Not a good setup. As luck would have it the storm had passed and we got hit by a "bolt out of the blue". Let’s see damage report, an brand new GE TPL base station fried, multi bay antenna toast, the deep water well pump toast as well as the controller for it ( the cover blown off of the box and the motor start capacitor a spiral of smoking paper in basement) several clock radios and a bunch of light bulbs burnt to a crisp with the candle on top of the cake being the twin aircraft marker light on top of the tower burnt as well (only thing that remained were the two brass bases in the sockets and a bunch of glass beads in the housing). A very costly strike insurance did not cover a bit of the damage. A double hit came after buying a new base station, another GE TPL line base is that the FCC decided to go to 5 KHz deviation from the then standard 15 KHz deviation standard of the time. Not only the base station but five mobile radios were worthless.
As a "newbie General", only 2 years into ham radio, I've invested a lot of my funds in getting the equipment I wanted to advance in the hobby. I'll do whatever it takes to protect my shack. Keeping my eye on the weather at all times and disconnecting all of the equipment is one of them.
We use lightning maps to keep any eye. There's also a few apps that can notify you if theres a stike within x amount of miles. Arizona probably has the most lightning out of all places. I try to be very proactive
The ground wire(green) of your plug is an Equipment Ground). Its only purpose is to create a dedicated low resistance path to allow your breaker in your main panel to trip when there is a ground fault. This equipment. Ground is bonded in your panel to the neutral current carrying conductor. The bond assures the breaker will trip.
A ground rod or buried water pipe may or may not provide enough conductance depending on your soil.
If all your equipment has individual conductors to the same ground point (dedicated ground rod) you will have lightning protection
A ground rod may or may not
I wasn't home and my radio was on, storm came through and lighting hit 200 feet away, all the gear survived...... Lucky day. (Was a couple hours ago btw 😬)
Wow. Glad you didnt lose anything
@@hamradiohack I usually unhook the coax on the antenna, it does have an arrestor but that won't stop anything.