Close call with lightning

[kb3qay]

Baaad storm a few nights ago! About the time I say to the wife "maybe we should go to the basement," we're enveloped by very bright light followed by a loud snap and a nano-second later by the loud thunder clap. The loud snap was the sound of all breakers in the box tripping at the same time. I reset all breakers after the storm passed, then it was damage control time. It killed the phone and the neighbors phone. Lucky the computer was up-plugged. Electric Range had it's brains scrambled. The cook top works FB but the oven is Tango Uniform. The part I need to fix it is discontinued. Went down to the shack, plugged in the coass from the dipole and attempted a transmission. SWR meter went off the scale! There's no DC short across the cable - but the center insulator is a 1:1 balun. (The kind in a section of PVC with the ferrite beads) I'm thinking the balun might be the lightning victim. Any ideas or personal experiences?  Jim

[k4kyv]

Electric Range had it's brains scrambled. The cook top works FB but the oven is Tango Uniform. The part I need to fix it is discontinued.

Don't you love it when just about the time a device has been in service long enough to need a replacement part, that part is "discontinued".  

I had to trash a $750 kerosene heater because a $5 part was discontinued at the factory, and I couldn't locate one anywhere on the face of the planet.  When I talked to the guy at the company, he seemed to think I was being unreasonable for even asking. "That heater is fifteen years old!" he exclaimed. Like you would be expected to need the part to go into a brand new one (perhaps with the exception of a lightning strike).

[kg8lb]

 Don,
 Just made a comment in that regard in another thread. The JRC NRD that I bought new had been discontinued before the warranty was up. The US importer said that JRC was no longer supplying parts !  
  Like the fellows with some of the later model iCom radios that could not source the needed display chips when the radio was barely a year old. Really makes one appreciate the boatanchors ! Imagine a ligntining strike taking out your 5 year old $13,000 Icom 9500 a few years from now. Will the parts still be around ?

  Glad to hear in this case at least there was no subsequent fire along with the nasty hit. Hope all is back to normal soon.

[kb3qay]

Don - Funny thing is, I'll probably pull out the little breadboard and end up troubleshooting individual components just cause it's the old buzzardly thing to do! As for the dipole, I'll try running without the balun since the coax makes a nice 90 degree run to it's center. The challenge will be getting it on the ground since the trees have grown around the support ropes holding them fast. Back to the electric range - It was only a few months ago I spent 100 dollars on a new temperature sensor and bake coil, and was hopeful of getting many more years out of that range. Oh well.......nuts!

[W3FJJ]

Jim, Sorry to hear about your lightning damage.. Im just up the road from you, in conowingo
and it was a bad storm here too. Luckily no damage but I did hear a sizzling arc sound  come from
the ham shack, just before a white  flash, and big boooom, less than a second later.   The rumbles 
shook the house...Scary stuff...        Good luck with all...    Chuck

[kb3qay]

Thanks Chuck - That was about the most electrical activity I've ever seen in a thunderstorm - Scarey stuff indeed!

[Pete, WA2CWA]

Don,
 Just made a comment in that regard in another thread. The JRC NRD that I bought new had been discontinued before the warranty was up. The US importer said that JRC was no longer supplying parts !  
  Like the fellows with some of the later model iCom radios that could not source the needed display chips when the radio was barely a year old. Really makes one appreciate the boatanchors ! Imagine a ligntining strike taking out your 5 year old $13,000 Icom 9500 a few years from now. Will the parts still be around ?

  Glad to hear in this case at least there was no subsequent fire along with the nasty hit. Hope all is back to normal soon.

Doesn't take a lightening strike to turn your rig to deadness but if I had a $13K+ radio, I've have some equipment insurance to cover it in case of some disaster.

[DMOD]

My Dad narrowly escaped last Sunday.

He had just shut his car door and before he inserted the key, he saw a bright flash and then heard a loud explosion.

Long story short, lightning hit the power line near the house, flashed over to his cyclone fence, and then to his engine.

The hood has a hole in it and the top of the engine compartment was carbonized.

ECU is ok, but the fuel injectors, coils, etc are toast.


'Bout $6,000 damage he tells me.


Phil - AC0OB

[k4kyv]

I  have seriously entertained the idea of running the computer and other sensitive gear off a motor-generator, with the two units mechanically connected together with about a 3' long insulated shaft, using a wireless or fibre optic router to connect to the internet. I might lose the modem and router, but at least wouldn't blow up the computer and related expensive stuff.

I have  never lost a piece of ham equipment to a lightning blast, but I have lost one computer, more cordless phones and answering machines than I  could count, a VCR and a DVD player over a period of several years.  I now run the TV, DVD player, stereo equipment, etc. through an isolation transformer, hoping transformer core saturation would offer some surge protection, as well as noise  filtering.  So far, so good. Consumer-junk grade "surge protectors" have been totally useless.

[kb3ouk]

i got a small surge protector one time and went to plug something into it and i kept feeling the metal in the sockets pushing around. tore it apart and all it had was a switch that had some kind of breaker or resettable fuse following it, then a bunch of metal clips for the socket contacts. it had a 3 pin plug with 2 wires, the grounds on the sockets were all tied together but left floating and were'nt even connected to the plug.

[K6JEK]

...
the oven is Tango Uniform. The part I need to fix it is discontinued.
...

Here is someone who repairs no longer available appliance boards. I just sent in an oven board (GE) and got it back, fixed, in less than a week.  Other guys do this too.  I figured out the part number and Googled it.  I also eBay'd it.  That's how I found this guy:

ovenclockrepair@sbcglobal.net

[W7TFO]

Back in '83 I worked for KZZP in Mesa, AZ, and the studios took a direct hit one night during monsoon season.  Many things were damaged, a phone on the sales managers' desk was on fire, and come to find out the TV in the conference room lost the 75 to 300 Ohm transformers on the outdoor antenna coax.  Both ends!  I cut them open and there was nothing inside any more.  Not even dust....

73DG

[Opcom]

Electric Range had it's brains scrambled. The cook top works FB but the oven is Tango Uniform. The part I need to fix it is discontinued.

Don't you love it when just about the time a device has been in service long enough to need a replacement part, that part is "discontinued".  

I had to trash a $750 kerosene heater because a $5 part was discontinued at the factory, and I couldn't locate one anywhere on the face of the planet.  When I talked to the guy at the company, he seemed to think I was being unreasonable for even asking. "That heater is fifteen years old!" he exclaimed. Like you would be expected to need the part to go into a brand new one (perhaps with the exception of a lightning strike).

Manufacturers do not want anyone keeping a household item that long. If you manage to do it, they seem to act as if you have cheated them by not already buying a new one. Consume! Consume! Never mind if it still works, its 3 years old buy a new one. In the future we may turn the old one in to the store to be sacrificed upon the altar of green recycling (avoiding the up-front core charge but not the recycling fee) - with the agenda of destroying the secondary market. Don't worry about those who can't afford a new one or those who are frugal and prefer to buy used. The poor can put it on a credit card for 10 years at 22.5%, and the frugal ones, they need to get with the pogrom, er.. program and cough up the greenbacks.

I grew up with appliances, tools, and other products that were already 20 years old and still working and were expected to last a lifetime or maybe 50 years anyway. It is not important whether a 50 year old battery charger is up to date or if it has been repaired three times as long as it still works. With something expensive like your heater, it is the principle of getting a quality product that will last a generation when one's hard-earned money is spent.

Once a manufacturer of household goods has sold out, rejected the very citizenry that enabled them to build a business and a name, and moved operations to a place halfway around the world, quality is over for them except for lip service on paper. Anything coming from the new place is going to be a product in which every part has been reduced to the lowest common denominator. There is a new power plant being built near Sparta, IL. All the parts including the steel beams come from overseas. How can it be cheaper to make steel beams in Red China and then ship them here than it is to make them 200 miles away. Ought to be a regulation that national infrastructure has to have a certain amount of nationally made components. What do we get from the Red Chinese? lead paint on baby toys, antifreeze in toothpaste, carcinogens in sheet rock. Poison in the pet food. What about those beams?

There is a computer in everything and the concept of "brand protection" is arising into actual practice and with that comes encrypted data inside ICs for authentication to "allow" the product to be used or not. Perhaps some day one will not own an appliance but license it. One will have to buy a license to use the product and it will stop working if it is not paid up in advance. That will solve the whole problem of wanting to keep a product for a long time as they just 'price up' the fee according to product age.

Last week a turn signal light socket failed on my 6 year old truck. WTH -that ought to last 10+ years. The dealer wanted $75 for the part. I got out a little pick-tool and re-shaped the contacts and fixed it myself. $30K truck made with cheap junk.

It is interesting to think about electronic parts and how some are of such high quality that they still meet spec after 40 or even 100 years. Everyone knows tubes are replacement items. So are solid state devices. The normal, almost guaranteed, minimum life expectancy for an IC is 10 years but with today's processes they are very pure and could last much longer, we don't know how long. The clock is ticking on that $15,000 radio set.

[kg8lb]

Don,
 Just made a comment in that regard in another thread. The JRC NRD that I bought new had been discontinued before the warranty was up. The US importer said that JRC was no longer supplying parts !  
  Like the fellows with some of the later model iCom radios that could not source the needed display chips when the radio was barely a year old. Really makes one appreciate the boatanchors ! Imagine a ligntining strike taking out your 5 year old $13,000 Icom 9500 a few years from now. Will the parts still be around ?

  Glad to hear in this case at least there was no subsequent fire along with the nasty hit. Hope all is back to normal soon.

Doesn't take a lightening strike to turn your rig to deadness but if I had a $13K+ radio, I've have some equipment insurance to cover it in case of some disaster.

 Yes, everything here is insured for lightning damage already.Even the $50 radios .Insured for full replacement costs. The point about the $13K radio was more in regards to replacement parts in general for some of this esoteric stuff. The JRC NRD 545 as I clearly noted failed on it's own.Although I mentioned lightning strikes, there are many things that can go wrong with the newer stuff. Many of the later, proprietary parts are often NLA in very short order. Lightning insurance is useless in this case unless the owner is willing to commit insurance fraud.  In the case of the brand new NRD 545, JRC stopped support when they quit production.[/b]
The comment was in response to Don's comments regarding mfg non support, not so much about lightning strikes per-se.

  BTW Drake still supports the R8s to a very high degree at the 10+ years from end of production date.

   

[K1JJ]

My experience with Kenwood and Yaesu repairs has been this:

First, if it's an older rig and you mention "lightning damage" they will sometimes discourage repair by throwing out a big estimate price over the phone. I've had this happen twice many years ago before I put in a good tower radial ground system.

That said, after a certain period of years, like maybe ten to fifteen after production, they refer repairs to their "authorized" repair shops. These are guys who set up shop on their own and are "approved" - and may have some parts inventory requirements, I dunno.

Anyway, we are still at the mercy of the discontinued parts, though I have had good experiences with the quality of ricebox repairs, when needed, thru these shops.

Two years ago one of the AM forum miscreants bought a used FT-1000D. It arrived DOA with a bad main LSI logic board. No refund was offered. This big chip was no longer avaialble, so he parted it out. Yes, there IS a limited lifespan for certain critical parts availability - especially parts the manufacturer underestimated the crapout factor for.

I suppose the best idea would be to find a junker spare rig as a backup as soon as they become available. Over time there will be more and more FT-1000D parts rigs in the pipeline as time takes its toll on them.

The other alternative is to trade up every few years. [GAWD!]

T

[The Slab Bacon]

the REAL other alternative is to run GOOD tube gear. You dont have those problems with "Planned Obsolescence" chips that are no longer available. 

[W2PFY]

I suppose the best idea would be to find a junker spare rig as a backup as soon as they become available. Over time there will be more and more FT-1000D parts rigs in the pipeline as time takes its toll on them.

That's how I manage my computer systems. I now have four good operating computers and about four parts rigs.

I think the best way to buy any more modern transceiver is from someone local where you can try it out at their QTH.

[W1RKW]

I've had 2 close calls myself but nothing was damaged, just my pride.  On both occasions they were nearby strikes. First one was on the telephone and got popped in the chin by an arc.  That hurt.  The second was in the garage a couple of years ago. I was watching a storm roll in and was leaning up against the metal rail for the garage door wheels when a nearby strike occurred.  The shock from the metal made me run inside the house to never watch a storm outside while rolling in.

I make it a practice to disconnect electronics when not in use and for approaching storms.  Many electronics are in stand by when 'off' so it reduces the electric bill a tiny bit. Plus just do it to protect stuff from storms or any other anomalies on the power line.

On the subject of obsolete parts.  I inherited an old commercial grade lawn mower made by the Sensation Lawn Mower Co out of Nebraska from my father.  I used to push it around when I lived there. It's about 35 years old. It's a tough old mower like a Gravely.  My father was going to toss it because he ran into the problem of finding replacement parts for it as the company had gone out of business back in the 80s.  It didn't work when I took it from him 7 years ago.  I hated to see it go to the dump so I tried to find parts for  it.  I managed to get it working but it wasn't 100% and I've used it since but over the course of a few years I have managed to find everything needed to make it new or close to new including a NOS engine.  I'm hoping to get another 35 years out of it.

[kg8lb]

 Mechanical devices are no problem for the most part. Just about any part can be readily fabricated.  I make a good living building and keeping one of a kind vehicles running. (earthbound and airborne)

 If only it were that easy to fab up a proprietary display, processor  etc.