Just thinking

[corbintechboy]

I made a post here years ago about an outside antenna. I'm getting back into radio for HF and scanner stuff. I live on a 5.5 acre lot and what amounts to basically a field and we do get a lot of lightening here. I have read enough over the years about safe grounding and such, I just don't have the confidence to do it even with the knowledge.

Made me wonder, I have a cellphone booster because we live in the country. We have had people here on all three major networks and on the phones at the same time and the booster handled it fine. Why can't we have a big antenna with a "booster" of sorts that let's up use the antenna with no danger of lightening? Like, a small dish on the side of my home that points to a solar powered booster that sends the signals to the dish (or whatnot) and allows me to hear them on the radio. Seems doable in my mind and it would remove all dangers at least for receive.

I have all this land and want to do stuff with radio out there but the dangers seem to outdo the benefits in my mind. I also thought about making a solar powered shack and doing everything out of it, of course if and when money permits.

 

[K4EET]

Hi @corbintechboy and kudos for your technical desires. Now to just overcome your fears. I thought I was going to find you in Florida and not Kentucky based on your lightening statement on frequency and intensity. LOL 😂! You’ve got it easy, relatively speaking.

As you know, good lightning abatement planning and implementation is paramount. I posted a whitepaper on this subject by an author that explains the National Electrical Code (NEC) in the area of grounding for residential dwellings. I’ll find that post and reference it in this thread. There are other good threads on grounding and lightning abatement that can be found in Radio Reference by searching.

Let’s hope this thread gets some good comments for you.

73, Dave

 

[mmckenna]

Made me wonder, I have a cellphone booster because we live in the country. We have had people here on all three major networks and on the phones at the same time and the booster handled it fine. Why can't we have a big antenna with a "booster" of sorts that let's up use the antenna with no danger of lightening? Like, a small dish on the side of my home that points to a solar powered booster that sends the signals to the dish (or whatnot) and allows me to hear them on the radio. Seems doable in my mind and it would remove all dangers at least for receive.

Cell phone boosters, like you describe, are Bi-Directional Amplifiers, often called "BDA's".
They grab the cellular signal from the cell site via a donor antenna that is likely on your roof, amplify that, and send it out to an antenna inside your home.
In reverse, they grab the signal from the cell phone, amplify it, and send it back out to the cell site via the antenna on your roof.

It works because the uplink and downlink frequencies (frequencies that come from the cell site versus the frequencies that come from the cell phone) are different. This difference is the "offset".
The offset makes it fairly easy to filter.
One issue that can happen, however, is that the antenna inside our home is too close to the antenna outside your home, and it goes into a feedback loop. That is the signal sent out from one antenna gets picked up by the other antenna, runs through the amplifier, and keeps repeating this.

Doing this with shortwave radio wouldn't give you the frequency offset, and the two antennas would interfere with each other unless you did it on completely different bands.
Same thing with frequencies used by your scanner.
Also, there are FCC rules regarding rebroadcasting signals, licensing of boosters, etc. It can be done on cellular frequencies and can be done on other public safety bands, but it requires some legal stuff and some specific rules with the FCC.



Where I think you are going with this, correct me if I'm wrong...
You want to have a radio with a better antenna away from your home to help reduce lightning strike risks to your home.
You could buy a remotely controlled receiver and connect it via your home network back to a computer running software to remotely control the radio.
That would give you the "air gap" between the two devices. The radio/antenna would still be at risk for a lightning strike. The network connection, if it was a wired connection, can still pass that energy into your home network, also. If you did it via WiFi or some other point to point RF network link, you'd be OK.
I've got a setup like that at work. A networked remote radio receiver at a high site, and a web interface that allows me to control it from anywhere.

Is that along the lines of what you were thinking?

 

[corbintechboy]

Cell phone boosters, like you describe, are Bi-Directional Amplifiers, often called "BDA's".
They grab the cellular signal from the cell site via a donor antenna that is likely on your roof, amplify that, and send it out to an antenna inside your home.
In reverse, they grab the signal from the cell phone, amplify it, and send it back out to the cell site via the antenna on your roof.

It works because the uplink and downlink frequencies (frequencies that come from the cell site versus the frequencies that come from the cell phone) are different. This difference is the "offset".
The offset makes it fairly easy to filter.
One issue that can happen, however, is that the antenna inside our home is too close to the antenna outside your home, and it goes into a feedback loop. That is the signal sent out from one antenna gets picked up by the other antenna, runs through the amplifier, and keeps repeating this.

Doing this with shortwave radio wouldn't give you the frequency offset, and the two antennas would interfere with each other unless you did it on completely different bands.
Same thing with frequencies used by your scanner.
Also, there are FCC rules regarding rebroadcasting signals, licensing of boosters, etc. It can be done on cellular frequencies and can be done on other public safety bands, but it requires some legal stuff and some specific rules with the FCC.



Where I think you are going with this, correct me if I'm wrong...
You want to have a radio with a better antenna away from your home to help reduce lightning strike risks to your home.
You could buy a remotely controlled receiver and connect it via your home network back to a computer running software to remotely control the radio.
That would give you the "air gap" between the two devices. The radio/antenna would still be at risk for a lightning strike. The network connection, if it was a wired connection, can still pass that energy into your home network, also. If you did it via WiFi or some other point to point RF network link, you'd be OK.
I've got a setup like that at work. A networked remote radio receiver at a high site, and a web interface that allows me to control it from anywhere.

Is that along the lines of what you were thinking?

That is a good idea.

I could put radios outside in a small "shack" of sorts and have solar feed a battery and have the radios networked on wifi.

What made me think of this is like ferrite coupling on the MW band. Almost like when you walk into a room and a weak FM station is playing and you move yourself a certain way and that weak signal becomes strong. I suppose in that situation, you are acting as an antenna. If an antenna could be hooked to a unit that could act in the same way but without the downfalls like lightening, it would be cool.

We get these storms occasionally and it seems even more often now where it is like non stop lightening. I have a weather station that shows lightening strikes and many time when these storms happen, it can't even get to a one second count when the next strike is happening.

I read something when I got the metal roof installed because I was wondering if it would attract lightening. Of course the answer is no and if a strike were to hit the metal roof, I read it would just dissipate it and nothing would happen but maybe a pop heard (probably loud and enough to make a person jump out of the seat). I wish I could get the type of safety the roof seems to have with an antenna,

 

[corbintechboy]

Hi @corbintechboy and kudos for your technical desires. Now to just overcome your fears. I thought I was going to find you in Florida and not Kentucky based on your lightening statement on frequency and intensity. LOL 😂! You’ve got it easy, relatively speaking.

As you know, good lightning abatement planning and implementation is paramount. I posted a whitepaper on this subject by an author that explains the National Electrical Code (NEC) in the area of grounding for residential dwellings. I’ll find that post and reference it in this thread. There are other good threads on grounding and lightning abatement that can be found in Radio Reference by searching.

Let’s hope this thread gets some good comments for you.

73, Dave

Thanks for the link, I read the PDF. I think I may have read it before. It's like I understand the concepts and they make sense, just a safety thing in my mind. In my mind, I could put an antenna up two acres away from the house. That would mean more ground rods to dissipate a strike but you are also supposed to keep coax as short as possible so that's a no go.

Maybe I worry to much but I have a deep respect for electricity, been knocked on my tail a few times in my life and I think that has instilled that sort of fear/respect into my being.

 

[K4EET]

<snip>
Maybe I worry to much but I have a deep respect for electricity, been knocked on my tail a few times in my life and I think that has instilled that sort of fear/respect into my being.

Heart–stopping electricity is definitely something you want to understand (not fear) and have a high level of respect for.

I’ve had a lightning strike on a chimney within 20 feet of where I was sitting. Due to the lightning protection and surge protection I have on feedlines, telephone lines, power lines, etc.; that night I had a few gas discharge tubes fire but nothing electronic was damaged. I heard the hit and bricks being dislodged and was a tad startled but lived to talk about it.😃

 

[corbintechboy]

Heart–stopping electricity is definitely something you want to understand (not fear) and have a high level of respect for.

I’ve had a lightning strike on a chimney within 20 feet of where I was sitting. Due to the lightning protection and surge protection I have on feedlines, telephone lines, power lines, etc.; that night I had a few gas discharge tubes fire but nothing electronic was damaged. I heard the hit and bricks being dislodged and was a tad startled but lived to talk about it.😃

Was an experiment when I was a young kid. Take a piece of wood and drive a nail through each end. Cut an extension cord and hook a wire to each nail. Press a hogdog on the nails and plug it in and it will cook. Did that, it worked.

Wise ole young me thought "hey, if that works, what about a pie tin and cook an egg". Yeah, my mother had to kick me off the plug, I was locked into holding it. First lesson with many more to come in my life.

I was raised in a poor household with a single mother. We lived in apartments and a friend and I used to find electronics in the dumpster and see if it worked and fix what needed fixing. And one time on those adventures, I grabbed a transformer while it was plugged in with a "whats this" sorta thing running through my head. The breaker blew so I have no idea how much power run through me. But my friend said I jumped really high and landed on my knees. Another round of lessons....

 

[K4EET]

Was an experiment when I was a young kid. Take a piece of wood and drive a nail through each end. Cut an extension cord and hook a wire to each nail. Press a hogdog on the nails and plug it in and it will cook. Did that, it worked.

Wise ole young me thought "hey, if that works, what about a pie tin and cook an egg". Yeah, my mother had to kick me off the plug, I was locked into holding it. First lesson with many more to come in my life.

I was raised in a poor household with a single mother. We lived in apartments and a friend and I used to find electronics in the dumpster and see if it worked and fix what needed fixing. And one time on those adventures, I grabbed a transformer while it was plugged in with a "whats this" sorta thing running through my head. The breaker blew so I have no idea how much power run through me. But my friend said I jumped really high and landed on my knees. Another round of lessons....

😳