Open wire feeder static drainage

[w4hbm]

Hello gentlemen.
The call on AM Forum is new, but the operator has been causing trouble since 1962.
My question for the group is about W8BAC's modified lightning arrestor and static drain. The reason I ask is that my station also has one of these I.C.E. units, and when opened up, yesterday, I was shocked. (Figuratively, not literally).
The Model 309H label clearly says, "6KWDC."
The capacitors inside (two pieces) are 3300pF at 2KV !!!
The inductors, wound with 24AWG enamel magnet on ferrite toroids, show 1400uF (15,825XThe little gas tubes are labeled "163B."
Can this be effective? I pulled the whole box shebang off the wall to dig inside,
and now I am reinventing the wheel. Do the W8BAC inductors have ferrite rod cores? I wound up 7 inches of 10AWG magnet on a 1" Teflon rod and that came to 16.9uH. At 1.8megs, that's 191 ohms, X. With 16AWG on the same rod the inductance jumped to 66uH, and that computes to 746 ohms X. So I drilled the teflon rod on the lathe and shoved a 10mm ferrite rod in, and L jumped to 1340uH and 15,147 X.  Can we re-open this discussion, please?
TNX, Hal

[Mike/W8BAC]

Hi Hal,

Those inductors I used are from Array Solutions. Here is a link.

http://www.arraysolutions.com/Products/staticsurgecoils.htm

The Array Solutions surge coils simply replace the inductors that came inside the ICE lightening protection box. Those ferrite inductors in the ICE are supposed to do the same thing BUT could not take a continuous  carrier even at 200 watts. They melted down and let out the magic smoke. I simply gutted the ferrite inductors and replaced them with the Array Solutions coils. No ferrite rods needed.The full size coils are a perfect replacement.

Your 309H, and the rest of the ICE impulse suppressors have been changed since my suppressor was made. For instance, I had no capacitors in mine. Just arc tubes and ferrite inductors (one each per feed line leg). I don't have any first hand experience with the newer suppressors. It may be that ICE has fixed the problem they had on earlier models. I don't know.

When it comes time to replace this system I have a plan to use the same Array Solutions coils and a pair of PollyPhaser gas tubes. Good luck with your project.

Mike

[w4hbm]

Dear Mike,
Thank you for the timely reply. Just as I figured, the innards are cheese. I am on old BC first 'phone when there were FP's, and worked for slavedrivers in the NYC AM and FM markets, one hand on the oar, the other up my butt.
The new inducxtors worked out well as far as values. The 1340uH in a solenoid form with the type 61 buried inside the teflon seems happy. I do not know how Jay achieved 890 Ohms, X on a 1.5" core with let's say 7 inches of #16. But that is moot, now. I found some 40KV High Energy hockey pucks in the workshop bins. Some are marked "272K." They are as big as hockey pucks. I think they will withstand the occasional 3 ampere antenna current. Latly, from pix at Array, I see a resistor was added from each line to GND. The photo looks like it's a 100K, 1 watt, so if you see one, would you let me know, please. I intend to ditch the I.C.E. as the founder is recently an SK.  Hal

[flintstone mop]

You might achieve the same thing fabricating a plate the size of your ladder line with auto or lawnmower spark plugs mounted on it, to discharge the over voltage to ground.

[w5gw]

A Texas solution. Build a climbable platform within 1' under the feeders.  Hang bacon strips from feeders.  Racoons will climb platform at night to get the bacon.  Solves both the static and racoon problem in your neighborhood.

 

[w4hbm]

Dear Fred and the Peanut Gallery,

The very day the new open wire feeder was ran from the cage to the shack, an 8-foot groundrod with a sparkplug setup was installed. I used a copper bussbar and 2 #860 sparkplugs without resistors, and slammed that
into the ground. As far as critters, the leftovers go in a cat bowl on the porch at night. There's nothing left by morning. Anything and everything goes. We got 'coons, squirrels, mice, possums, bears, moles, groundhogs, pyelated cocknockers, chipmunks, cats, dogs, skunks and one woolybooger who doesn't say much. The rest of them argue about who's first.

[WBear2GCR]

Got revenuers and politicians too?

Got a varmit rifle too?

Just thinkin' out loud.

                _-_-bear

[w4hbm]

Dear Bear,
Mooneshine whiskey, available in 10 exciting flavors, is $10 for a Ball Jar. However, moonshine whiskey is no longer Kentucky's bootleg cash crop. Whacky Terbaccy now is, and it's grown in many spots in the hills, mostly near coal mine run offs to supply that good green slimy water. My last boss's nickname is Bear, and so was a good friend of mine some forty years ago. You are in good company. And sorry, I will not comment on weaponry in the ham radio forum.

[Steve W8TOW]

Hey 8BAC etc, I am a little behind on the topic, but the idea of putting an RF choke
off each feeder dates back to the Frank Jones days of the original Radio Handbook.
I have a pair of them off my 600 ohm feeders to ground.
Absolutely no problems...I was reminded of this technique back in 1989 when I was teaching
novice classes. Mike from ICE came to our class and presented a talk on
lightning protection...it rocked even back then...
well, "I said my peace and counted to 3"...there ya go OM..
73 Steve w8tow ol buzzard

[w4hbm]

Hullo Steve.

I took the ICE 309H apart and replaced the 2KV, 3300 pF ceramic disks with 2,000pF 858 mini-doorknobs, and added 1Meg from each of the strips near the caps, to the ground point. I left the toroids alone on this model, but will be building a much beefier drain when the rest of the parts get here. 
The problem is the new antenna. It's cut for 1810, and uses a 550 ohm ladder of 12AWG THHN, and absolutely refuses to tune. It's making me
a little uneasy. Like participating in a Telephone Pioneers parade.
I even yanked the Navy beehives off the walls and rebuilt 'em. Nothing burned...

[flintstone mop]

Hal,
It reads like you are having trouble with a static drain protection device and a NEW antenna that is not tuning up?
I assume you have a balanced feed line tuner that you are trying to match to the radio? What did you have before the new antenna was installed?
Your first post sounds like there was a nice working system before there was a change.
I finally got my dipole all stretched out and I'm loving the better signal reports. Full 240 feet long and 60feet high fed by approx 160 feet of 600 ohm ladder.
Fred

[w4hbm]

Dear Fred, (et al),   Yes, there was an antenna before. It was parallel with a 69KV XMSN line and there was lotsa noise. So it came down, and the new 160 meter dipole is 90 degrees to the pwr line. It doesn't match. I run an old Bliss Bal/Bal ATU, and before, it had beautiful sweep curves, It would find a match everywhere. Now, no dice. Sharp dips, many of them not better than 2.6:1SWR. A real PITA. Yanked down the HB 550 Ohm feedline and trashed it. Made up a new FL w/ THHN and comml spreaders. Rebuilt the USN beehives, Rebuilt the ICE309H. Now the Bliss is sitting with her pants down on the bench. I dunno where to look. Dummy load and switching all ok.

[flintstone mop]

OK Hal
Being 90 degrees to that nasty 69KV line should reduce the noise. You might want to consider a magnetic loop antenna for RX and have that as far as you can get it from the high tension lines.
I'm surprised you got her pants down. The Bliss tuner I had seemed to be built that it defied any dis assembly. The guy was quite a carpenter. My balanced coil had become defective and Mr Bliss had no spares. That was a real bear to get to. I swear this guy did everything he could to make that DAM tuner impossible to service. I got to the balanced coil and it was arced and broken. Probably from heating.
$600 wasted. Good tuner but no support afterwards. Great parts unit with the vac variable. You may have to consider building a nice HB bal tuner. There is good info here on AMFONE on a tuner a lot of guys built (me too) and does FB matching 160, 80, and 40...I have to reconfigure for the upper bands.
Here's a link:
http://amfone.net/Amforum/index.php?topic=18054.0

It never balks at legal limit AM.

Fred

[w4hbm]

Dear Fred,  Made up a 4:1 Current Balun and dipped it, okay from 160 - 10, and put it on the Bliss tits with the unbal lines going to a dummy load. She worked just fine, with long graceful sweeps down to 1:1 on all the bands, just like she was used to doing. Look at the attached Pic, and you will see it's been a long, long way since Shep was inside her. I added all the glass relays and padder vacs, and the remote control, too. I kept in touch with Shep for a few years 'cause he was a real treasure to Amateur Radio. So what if he was different. Aren't we all?
    Now, after answering the 260 e-mails I'm gonna pull her pants up and stick her back up on the tuner shelf and start working on the beehives, feedline and cage antenna. You can imagine what a chrome-plated humdinger THAT was. And to make matters better, I got poison ivy in January while messing with it.  The Palstar ZM-30 crashed and had to go back to Palstar. So it's up to the MFJ 259B, now. '73!

[flintstone mop]

Gadssssssssss
You don't mess around!!! The cage aerial looks really impressive. About 60 feet high?? Nice work Hal.
The tuner looks pretty serious...........It's a Bliss?? Not the same compromised Bliss tuner I bought in 2001. Very nice coils there.
The Palstar product was a little disappointing, for the money spent. The one I had was a "truly balanced" tuner and couldn't come close to matching my present dipole on 160M
I'm getting to know an old servant to Ham Radio Lore. A Dentron 3KA tuner. Had to re-learn tuning and using the least amount of inductance to get the TX and ANT caps close to full mesh. Less loss and no arcing issues in the tuner or amp.
Ok back to work

[w4hbm]

Hey Fred,   The cage dipole is as useless as the third tit on a bull. Yesterday, after all that work inside, I took the 4:1 current balun and the MFJ259B outsisde and hooked up to the system. It was squirrely: 25:1 SWR, Z's that would jump around while everything else stayed still.  So I lowered the cage feedpoint, (everything is on pulleys and 7/16" rope halyards) and hooked up right to the antenna terms. Same squirrel feed. Then it dawned on me. The end of one of the legs goes under a 3-ph 69KV transmission line. The AEP guys tell me the hair on their arms starts to wiggle at 15 feet close to the wires. Plus, there's a Telco 100 pair feeder under the power cables. I'm coupling to all that. There's 70 vac to ground just on that leg of the cage and 2vac on the other. The old dipole was noisy, but this one just will not tune becausae of all that energized copper. Oh well. Time to move it around.    The Bliss is no longer a Bliss, really. I used the basic box and rebuilt it, but kept the switch system to put the shunt cap before or after the inductors, ran by those Jennings SPDT vacuum relays. And that's why it will always be one of Shep's tuners.