Lightening Protection for the Ham Radio Station

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, spring is in the air — and already we’ve had violent thunder storms with lots of lightening. Protecting our equipment from lightening is one of the most important non-operating tasks that we do. Have a lot of expensive equipment inside the house with a nice tall metal structure outside in a cleared area is simply asking for lightening to strike.

There are a lot of misconceptions out there about lightening protection. Those misconceptions can cost you dearly.

When I went searching for good lightening protection information, there were lots of articles that also had a lot of misconceptions as well. After a lot of research, I settled on three QST articles that thoroughly, but clearly, described what needed to be done.

The articles describe three phases to lightening protection:

1. Identify your inside protection needs. This is a block diagram of all (all…) your equipment in the shack. This includes radios, amplifiers, tuners, telephones, computers, rotor boxes — all of it along with the type of connection it makes to the outside world.
2. Create your “Single Ground Point Ground Panel,” the place where all of your inside equipment is grounded.
3. Implement your antenna ground system outside the house.

Creating a lightening protection system is painstaking in that unless every piece of the puzzle is in place, your protection will fail. Any failure could result in serious harm to your equipment. By following this protection process, you’ll be minimizing your risk from a lightening strike.

Articles:

Lightening Protection for the Amateur Station — Part 1

Lightening Protection for the Amateur Station — Part 2

Lightening Protection for the Amateur Station — Part 3

Scot, K9JY

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