I am in a peculiar situation in that I have access to a commercial building roof that is fairly high up (4 stories) and overlooks a decent area, but I can only put a mag-mount antenna on the roof (nothing more permanent for now). The roof hatch from the 4th floor is about 30 inches square and has seemed to provide a sufficient ground plane for the mag-mount antenna to give me good reception, sometimes up to 60 miles away. I simply run the 14-foot cable down through the roof hatch to my scanner which is running 24/7 in a storage room on the 4th floor.
Here is my question: If there is a lightning storm in my area, am I running the risk of starting a fire by having the antenna up on the roof without any kind of lightning rod, etc...? I am willing to unplug my scanner if it's going to storm (since it's just a matter of going in the storage room) but I don't want to be constantly unmounting and remounting the mag-mount up on the rooftop every time it's going to storm. More importantly, I don't want to cause any damage to the building I'm working in. If lightning were to strike the antenna (which I highly doubt, since it's also not the highest metal structure on the roof), and there was no radio connected to the antenna, but the BNC tip was just dangling from a shelf, what would happen? Am I taking a big risk by having this mag-mount on the roof access door like that? Thanks for any help on this.
Here is my question: If there is a lightning storm in my area, am I running the risk of starting a fire by having the antenna up on the roof without any kind of lightning rod, etc...? I am willing to unplug my scanner if it's going to storm (since it's just a matter of going in the storage room) but I don't want to be constantly unmounting and remounting the mag-mount up on the rooftop every time it's going to storm. More importantly, I don't want to cause any damage to the building I'm working in. If lightning were to strike the antenna (which I highly doubt, since it's also not the highest metal structure on the roof), and there was no radio connected to the antenna, but the BNC tip was just dangling from a shelf, what would happen? Am I taking a big risk by having this mag-mount on the roof access door like that? Thanks for any help on this.