Questions about Horizontal Dipoles

[W2PMX]

Or move the antenna so that you can run the ladder line right to an antenna tuner in the shack. (You can use shielded balanced line, so you can run the line near metal.) As far as lightning protection, there's no such thing. (Nothing man-made can protect against 120 million volts at 30,000 amps.

Static charge protection (which also protects from induced voltages from nearby strikes) is different. Use a Blitz-bug or equivalent for coax. If you want to protect at the balanced feeder, you can use a copper block welded to a ground rod. Drill and tap the block for 2 automotive spark plugs. Connect the feeders to the hot terminals of the spark plugs. Adjust the gaps so that the plugs don't arc over on full power peaks, then make them about 1.5 times as large.

But disconnect all antenna feeders when there's active lightning in the immediate vicinity.

 

[LtDoc]

Lightning protection, and any of the spark-gap type thingys shouldn't be used in the same sentence. They do not work -fast- enough to be any protection from lightning. By the time that 'surge' has built up enough 'juice' to bridge that gap it's already at the radios you're trying to protect. Sort of closing the barn door after 'they've already gotten out.
Most commercial broadcast stations use a direct ground through an inductor for lightning protection. An inductor is frequency sensitive so selecting the 'right' inductance for the frequencies of use is the key to that. The part that most people don't think about is that 'surge' through a lightning protection device has to go somewhere to be dissipated. A single ground rod just isn't going to dissipate a lot of 'surge', so using a lot of them, or putting in a radial ground system is a very nice idea. There are a lot of "if's" and "buts" to all this so be aware of them.
- 'Doc