ok as promised, here is my story.
My ego still hurts to this day...
I had been wanting to try a certain antenna set-up for quite a while, and actually posted/asked questions here about it quite a bit.
Specifically what i wanted to do was to use an Astroplane style antenna on a fiberglass mast (non-conductive guy wires as well) and using ferrite at a certain point on the coax in order to eliminate common mode currents on the shield.
the coax would come down the mast, across the roof and down to a ground rod right outside the shack. a real lightning arrestor was mounted on this ground rod, and from there another length of coax entered the shack.
at least that was the idea. (man this is embarrassing to write lol)
so i had everything put together and mounted, except for the ground rod.
yep.
i was waiting on the gas company to come out and mark their lines before i pounded it into the ground, but decided to run the coax into the house to try the antenna out in the meantime.
yep.
I was fine for about three days (gas company had come, but i still hadn't put the rod in the ground. here in the SW its like pounding it into a rock.)
Then came the far off lightning storm. We get this around here every so often where there will be lightning all around but no rain at all. The air had that smell to it, and lightning could be seen in the distance.
And that's when it occurred to me that i had done a VERY dumb thing.
I ran to the radio room and of course had the coax going into a radio.
(still haven't fixed it yet lol)
Like an idiot i unscrewed it from the radio and looking at the PL-259 in my hand i could see arcing from the shield to the center conductor. it was not actually struck but the energy was building up on the antenna from the surrounding lightning.
Realizing that i had basically created a lightning rod with nowhere to exit, i panicked.
i felt like at any moment a strike was coming and i'd be damned if it was going to shoot flames across my radio room.
i ran outside with a pair of dykes and cut the coax where it would just be hanging in free space but couldn't whip around.
I got quite the shock right through the insulated grips of the dykes when i cut that coax.
didn't knock me over but i sure the hell felt it go through my body.
I really have no idea just how close i came to either being dead or burning my house down, or both.
i'll tell you that i will never forget looking at that coax connector and seeing the blue light of death sparking over and over.
After that the ground rod was installed with the arrestor and the antenna performed amazingly.
The phrase "just smart enough to be dangerous" seems very appropriate lol.
What an Idiot!
LC
