Radio Discussion Community

having a silver rod so high in the sky makes it a lightning conductor. So do you need to earth it? If so how do you go about it

in all my years on cb only 1 breaker has had an antenna hit by lightning
but as he was using the handle "saint peter " then i think he was tempting fate
but normaly it's not a problem

My handle in Nov 81 was Condorman, in Birmingham. My old INVADER homebase aerial got hit by lightning. Then a couple of years later, my Thunderpole Mk1 was zapped...twice!! It blew a small hole about 10mm round OUTWARDS, like a bullet had been shot out from inside the main shaft just above the coil. It was witnessed by a neighbour. It partially melted the coil, and I started to receive lots of radio stations like Radio 1 on it..all at the same time! Then, it got hit again a month or so later...just as I was taking out the coax from my rig. I got blown across the room and squashed my mate (Black Shadow) behind me up the wall and bruised his back, and I lost the feeling in my right arm for nearly 2 days. Needlass to say, I put a lightning arrestor connector on the coax after that, going into a 6ft copper pipe which was knocked into the ground. Incidently, after the 2nd strike..the radio stations disappeared, and I could listen to far away users again clearly without Terry Wogan talking over them lol So my advise, if you have an outdoor antennae, is to use a lightning arrestor as they only cost a few pounds, and a 2 metre length of copper pipe and some decent thickness copper wire to connect the 2 together.

Some pics on earthing would be good i.e antenna to the copper pipe, wires etc...

- Gordon

Hi, sandman, where were you from back then, i remember a condorman i think from when i went on, my handle was crusty y fronts(i was a kid!!) there was roadrunner from the delves, alleycat from the delves, quite a few of us, i am sure i remember a condorman.