John,

You are right.  When it comes to a direct lightning strike, all bets are off
no matter what.  Shoot, my brother in law had everything unplugged and
grounded.  A tornado went right through the little town he lived in.  He saw
it coming down their street before they took cover in the basement.
Lightning struck his 2 meter beam above his tribander at about 55 to 60
feet, came down the coax, into the basement, and since the coax was
terminated in a glass jar, believe it or not, the lightning arced through
the RG8 over on to the furnace heat duct looking for solid ground, and
burned up the blower motor in the furnace.  Just the energy envelope build
up in his ham shack alone, popped some diodes to his 2 meter rig power
supply which, as I said, wasn't plugged in and had no antenna connected to
it.  I lost a couple of audio line diodes in my Ten Tec rig during my
lightning strike, too, and it wasn't connected.  Weird stuff, that
lightning.  I know my voice is probably a little higher than it used to be,
haw, but it was way too close for my liking.

Phil.
K0NX
The Zenith Tube
www.RedWhiteAndBlue.org




----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Miller" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, September 17, 2007 7:29 PM
Subject: Re: Question About Lightning For All You Florida Hams


> I've actually known people to have lightning fry their radios coming up
> through the RF ground on the radio as well. Everything here is true
though,
> a little work saves a lot of risk.