[geeks] high-dollar surge supressors

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

Dan Duncan wrote:
> Has anyone had experience with a "whole house" surge suppressor?
> Some friends of mine live in a lightning-prone area and their
> house came with one.  It's a ring that goes between the electric
> meter and the box.  They can't really say if it does anything
> or not, and I would still use surge protectors where I use them
> now, but it might be nice to add a little protection to everything.

I had one and it worked pretty well. Even died once. The manufacuter
refused to replace it saying that it died because it did it's job
(and I agree with them). 

If you don't know, lightening travels from the ground DOWN once a path
has been created from the ground UP. So the Franklin method of lightening
rods, dosen't just draw lightening to them, it creates it.

>From the time I put up my antenna farm untilthe time I took it down, I
no longer had any lightening problems. The antennas were made by
Cushcraft and therefore for lightening purposes, one huge grounded
array, which disapated the charge long before it became lightening.

I had at 10' above ground an MFJ 40-6 meter monster (a short dipole
with a huge capacitve hat) at 20' above ground a Cushrcarft av-3 20-10m
vertical and at about 30' above ground a 2m twist array (11 elements
horizontal tuned for 144.2 and 11 elements vertical tuned for 147.0),
on top of that an MFJ 3 element 2m beam  and a 9 foot 2m vertical.

Off to the side of the big array was a 220 ringo ranger. At about
15 feet was a 75 long wire for SWL and an hf rig in my bedroom and
a 2m/400 dual band for my "bedroom" 2m rig.

Except for the bedroom rigs, all the wires came down the side of the house
to the basement, where I had 2 6' ground rods in parallel and a bunch of
gas tube lightening supressors.

Before I had the array up I was constantly having lightening problems,
and in one big strike, lost 2 modems, a keyboard, some serial cards, and
a keyboard. Some were plugged into the the phone line, one modem and
keyboard were not plugged into anything. :-(

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson gsm at mendelson.com 972-54-608-069
Icq/AIM Uin: 2661079 MSN IM: geoffrey_mendelson at hotmail.com (Not for email)