Lightning and One Shocking Pro-97??!!?

[Ryfly]

My buddy and i were talking about storm chasing. He was giving me tips etc and then he told me this.

Apparently when was chasing one of his first storms, he had a mobile antenna and a pro-97. As he was holding the 97 goin down the road, he started getting shocked from the BNC connector on the top of the scanner. He was getting shocked so bad he threw down the scanner. His buddy disconnected the antenna from the scanner. He told me there was a TON of cloud to ground lightning. So he recommended to me, stick with the small stubby antenna when you are inside the storm.

So what do you guys think?

 

[rdale]

I don't think the risk of a lightning strike is very much at all, but it certainly doesn't hurt to disconnect external connections during a storm.

 

[N1BHH]

Ryfly, that was good advise, because there is so much electrical energy in tornadoes and other types of storms that any electrical or electronic device can be adversely affected. And of course if you are touching anything metallic or electrical, you can be adversely affected to.

 

[rdale]

Tornadoes aren't electrical in nature, but the rest of your post was right-on...

 

[DaveNF2G]

What was probably arcing across the scanner's antenna terminal was static electricity. I can see how high speed winds (like tornados and thunderstorm winds) could generate large amounts of static charge.

 

[key2_altfire]

There could be a lot of reasons why your friend was getting shocked, my guess was that the antenna wasn't grounded to chassis. This is a very dangerous condition, if the car were to sustain a strike, disconnecting the antenna from the receiver is not going to help you.

The antenna and radio should be bonded to the same structure for the ground to minimize the electrical potential between them.

 

[rcvmo]

What was probably arcing across the scanner's antenna terminal was static electricity.

yes, a wunnerful phenomenon that will also kill the sensitivity of your receiver. I lost my receive on my Alinco dual band a couple years ago when we were going head on into a raging spring thunderstorm. I mean lightining hitting trees, powerpoles, anything with some good height. Almost like a movie. When it was done and over with, I noticed the main skywarn rptr which is usually full scale across our county was at most only 2-3 bars.
The next day I had my radio out on the bench replacing the pin diodes on the antenna circuit. It's still not right to the day, but better than what it was shortly after the storm.
Heavy rain in Detroit tonight.
rcvmo

 

[pogbobo]

Ryfly, I don't trust your posts anymore ... ever since you Rick Rolled me ... hahahaha



lmao

 

[Allan_Love_Jr]

But you know what really kills me is. Is when you live near a TV Station Antenna that is 100 times higher than your own home Antenna when over a sudden a Dang Lightning strike hits your Antenna instead of the TV Station Antenna. Now that sucks.

 

[N5TWB]

A National Weather Service meteorologist once related a story during spotter training of being shocked when he just had the radio microphone sitting in his lap while storm chasing. Needless to say, he did not recommend the experience and now takes care to hang the microphone in its holder.