energy in even a small lightning strike to zap about everything electrical in any reasonable-sized manufactory plant or home.
The stuff is vicious, completely unforgiving. I have spark-gaps to ground on all my ham antennas (two at the moment) and I still take the coaxial cable off the radios and drop it in a glass jar when there's a bad storm in the area.
And still I worry about it. That copper J-pole on the chimney is just begging for a bolt, or so it always seems to me. No, it's not the highest thing around, there are plenty of trees much taller (and the actual risk is pretty low, considering), but I believe in Finagle's Law, and that the perversity of the Universe (as an entity) does indeed tend toward the maximum.
If it CAN miss the much-taller tree and ground harmlessly, it WILL nail my shorter, ground-protected, disconnected antenna and arc over to the most expensive / hardest-to-repair piece of equipment I have.
So I worry a bit. |
