[time-nuts] GPS antenna and lightning

Joseph Gray jgray at zianet.com
Sun Oct 4 18:16:45 UTC 2009


After doing some online research myself into this topic recently, I am
in the process of providing some protection  for my Amateur Radio
station. I don't have the proper tools at home, so I am having a
stainless steel panel made that will attach to a steel window frame,
replacing the bottom glass pane. Polyphaser units mounted to the panel
will be used in place of coax feedthroughs. The panel will be
connected to a ground rod via copper sheet. I know that I should have
multiple ground rods spread over an area, but I'm in an apartment. The
ground rod will go into a flower bed outside the window, so the ground
conductivity should be better than normal for here.

Note the use of stainless steel for the panel. This avoids corrosion
due to dissimilar metals. I'll be using all stainless steel hardware,
also.

When the radios aren't being used, the inside coax cables will be
disconnected from the panel. I also plan on making some shunt
connectors to plug into the panel when the inside coax is
disconnected. This will ground out the antennas when not in use. This
isn't feasable with a GPS setup, but a GPS antenna isn't as much of a
lightning magnet as the typical HF antenna is.

This configuration isn't perfect, but It is the best I can manage at
this time. It is much more protection than many Hams have. In fact,
more than one local Ham has lost equipment in the past few months. And
yes, I'm in NM, where they study lightning.

Joe Gray
KA5ZEC



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