When lightning comes to visit

[WB2EMS]

I was at a meeting about 20 miles north of home last night and noticed a lightning storm happening down that way. Early in the season, but they happen. No big deal.

Got home and walked across the yard and found parts of my 40/60 meter fan dipole on the ground. Oh oh, the wind must have been strong. Looks like the porcelain center insulator fractured from the strain. I saw a few pieces of what I thought were the rope that was holding it around the yard as well, but it was dark.

Inside, not so good. TV doesn't receive. X10 light switch isn't working. Internet is out. Check in the shack. Strong smell of 'eau de stancor'. My Astron 30 amp supply that has run continuously since the 70's has no output. The flex computer won't boot. The fanless PC that runs the little sdr receiver is off line and while it boots, it won't answer the keyboard. Check and no breakers are tripped on the box downstairs. I don't know about the Flex 5000 or Elecraft transverter that were hanging off the Astron till I get another supply and computer in there. 

This morning in the light I saw that what I though was rope fragments were actually blasted pieces of the RG6 quad shield feedline that fed the fan dipole. Apparently it took a direct hit. I'll have to trace the feedline inside the house and see how exciting things got.

In 48 years of hamming, this is the first time I've had more than glancing blow from lightning. All in all, I could have done without.

[W7TFO]

It may well have been better that you weren't home...

73DG

[w4bfs]

wierd thing about the zorch .... I noticed that wire is standing off the cable at 90 degrees ....I have seen that before with strikes ... Lentz's law in action .... high peak current !

[KB2WIG]

Bummer.


klc

[w8khk]

Sorry to hear about your misfortune, Kevin.  I too experienced a hit that caused a great deal of damage a few years ago.  A nearby tree took a direct hit, and the currents through the ground damaged my home theater receiver, TV, two computers, the furnace and the central air.  All the wiring in the compressor/condenser/fan unit were pulverized, and it also damaged the copper freon lines.

I worked with the insurance agent to minimize the cost of repair/replacement.  I was able to fix the home theater receiver and the computers.  The Lenox Pulse furnace controller and purge fan were melted beyond recognition, and the repair tech said I needed a replacement furnace.  But it was so efficient and the entire combustion chamber is stainless steel, so I did not want to replace it with something inferior.  I found the parts were available to order, and did the repairs myself for under $200.00.  Because I worked with the insurance company to minimize costs, they waived the deductible and reimbursed me for all out-of-pocket expenses.  

It seems like you have quite a list of items that will need repair or replacement.  Perhaps hearing of my good luck with insurance may help you to get the best solution with your coverage if you are able to do some of the work yourself and limit the insurance costs significantly.

By the way, none of my amateur radio equipment was damaged.  I keep everything disconnected from power and antennas when not in use.  The long dipole with open wire feed between two trees has the feedline hanging on the ground 40 feet from the house.  If it gets hit, I may lose a tree or two, but nothing else. I learned long ago that using a grounding switch will not protect the connected equipment from a direct hit or anything nearby.

[n4joy]

Terrible news, Kevin; but fortunately you were not in the shack when it happened.  Living in Florida and having a tower, I am waiting for the inevitable to happen.  I disconnect when a storm approaches (not during of course) and try to remember to disconnect when not using the equipment during the summer months.  The tower is just a few feet from the ham shack (my office) so I leave the room during thunderstorms.  We've had a house or two in the area burn down from direct hits.

Anyway, I hope you'll be sharing some good news after you are able to check the equipment more thoroughly.   

[WB2EMS]

Thanks to everyone for the kind comments.

Yeah, I've been close to a couple of other lightning events, and not being in the shack was probably a good thing. Once we were taking shelter in a storm on a motorcycle in a small store and as the storm passed over it blew a branch off a small tree about 10 feet outside. That was outstandingly loud. Another time I was standing under a tin roof at shooting line and lightning reached down into a woods and blew up a little pine tree, surrounded by much larger trees and a nearby tower site not more than 100 feet from it. It blew steaming chunks of that pine to our feet. You could hear the multiple stokes back and forth of the strike on that one. So yeah, all in all I'm happy I wasn't in the house.

I don't know what insurance covers in this sort of case - once I get a feel for how much is damaged, I'll decide whether or not to get them involved. The antennas were connected to an antenna switch that had a good ground and was switched to the grounded position, and I remove the cable from that switches output to the other one that selects the radios to send it to. But it may  have jumped that gap, I'll look for surge marks tonight. What may have happened is that it hit the tower or the dipole attached to it, ran down the dipole leg to the feedline, to the ground end earthed there, but the current from that stroke spiked the power lines nearby and surged the AC lines in the house as well and killed the power supply and other unrelated devices around the house. The TV antenna was on the tower that the dipole was hung from, which may explain the TV. I'll know (or guess) more when I get a chance to explore things in detail this weekend. The coax from the dipole was draped on the ground in a loop of a turn or two just for this kind of event before entering the basement and the lightning arrestor. I'll have to see if I can tell where the stroke terminated.



Yeah, the wire bent out caught my eye as well.

[WA2SQQ]

I had a similar experience this past summer. The most fortunate thing was that my Flex 6500 was disconnected. Took out my router and two switches, 2 TV's and my rotor controller. Home owners covered everything less my $200 deductible. Last night I also heard the rumble and immediately disconnected all connections to the outside world. One thing I've already done is to install an Ethernet to fiber to Ethernet converter. Now my network is totally isolated by a short fiber cable. It might take the modem, but all my network connected devices are protected.

[W1RKW]

I've had the experience of nearby hits. fortunately everything was disconnected with no damage to appliances, radios, etc.  But on 2 occasions I've had the experience of being in the house, being up  close and personal and taking a jolt. Once was touching a piece of metal when a strike occurred which felt like touching a spark plug on a lawn mower and another on the phone with the XYL and took a hit in the chin from the handset which felt like the biggest "drag your feet along a carpet and touch a door knob type" jolt. Nothing life threatening but certainly a wake up call. I figure both were strong enough to damage solid state equipment but as mentioned, electronics were disconnected.

[WB2EMS]

another on the phone with the XYL and took a hit in the chin from the handset which felt like the biggest "drag your feet along a carpet and touch a door knob type" jolt. Nothing life threatening but certainly a wake up call.

Maybe 20 years ago a young woman was killed someplace around CNY when she was on a wired phone and lightning struck nearby, maybe on the pole. She got zapped through the headset.    Since then I've made it a point to only use cellular or cordless phones during storms.

In the old days as a JN, I had a #28 long wire endfed antenna in the 2nd floor bedroom shack out over the pool to a swingset. When storms would come I'd cut the wire free from my tuner and let it drop across the yard for safety. One day the storm had popped up out of nowhere and I was late getting to the room. As I disconnected the wire, lightning flashed outside and I got a very solid jolt! Based on the flash to boom times, the stroke was at least two miles away at the time. 

All the radios were disconnected from antennas (I think, might have a 6 meter beam piped directly into the flex). Going home to see what works and doesn't this evening.

[Opcom]

I hope not all of the gear got fried. God thing the house didn't catch fire.

[W2NBC]

 Momma nature's lightning, wind, and ice all add to the fear factor we all share. Sorry you're going through this!
My bet is you will get most things going, and end up better off after you make an inventory of all and replace with insurance as needed..

One tool that is invaluable and quite accurate is the "WeatherBug" application on my smartphone called "Spark".  I'm sure there are equivalent apps available for iPhone, etc.

If storms are anywhere near the area,  one swipe and this program does its thing as seen here about 10 minutes ago:

[w1vtp]

A long time ago (70 - 80s) I had a repeater located in a horse barn in Francistown, NH.  We had one significant direct hit from a lightning storm where all the protection gas bags were vaporized.  The lightning traveled down the control line into the house.  There the lightning went throughout the house wiring - one outlet actually zorched out a flame about 6" long.  We were relatively unscathed in that experience due partly to some careful planning by the engineers in our club.

Come time to decommission the repeater, we took down the repeater tower which was about 90 feet up in the air.  We gave the owner some money to help out with allowing us space and told her that now that the tower was gone, she should probably take that money and apply it to some lightning protection.  There was a sudden moment where she realized that our tower was keeping her barn from being hit - you could see it on her face.

I never did contact the owner.  The farm was 900+ feet above sea level - the repeater had some pretty good coverage.  At home, I disconnect all antennas and unplug all the equipment from the line.  I haven’t decided what to do with the independent station ground.

Al

[flintstone mop]

Never had a lightning problem in Maryland. We got hit twice, here in Pa.. One was a direct hit on the ground which zorched a coax run to the shack and things connected to it inside the shack. The first was through the cable company coax that zorched the TV and computers.

I know your pain. These are PIA things you will have to absorb and fix. I lost an old SDR 1000 from the first strike and Flex refused to fix it. The TV was under warranty and they replaced everything inside, except the display. If the display was shot; they would authorize total replacement of the TV.

Fred

[W6TOM]

 Here in the Bay Area lightning is a rare thing, I believe we have the least  incidence in the country but not so in other parts of the state. I went down to Bakersfield in mid September 4 years ago to do some radio work on 3 mountain tops in the  Tehachapi  Mountains. The weekend prior a storm front moved through the area with lots of lightning. My employer has a large facility in Bakersfield that has numerous buildings all connected to a phone switch by tie cables.

 There had been a lightning strike in the area, the tie cable from one building had no protection on the pairs. All the phone numbers on that cable came from one card in the phone switch, that card was fried due to the ground potential rise from the lightning strike. As luck would have it the card had surge protectors that kept the pulse from getting into the phone switch's back-plane.

 Late summer lightning is not a good thing in California after a typical summer of no rain, the Tehachapi Mountains are very dry, lots of grass land at lower elevations, there were some large fires. Cal Fire was just putting out the last ones when I went up to one peak, a few pictures.

[KD6VXI]

I moved from Bear Mountain peak that year.   Fires are always a problem this way.

I'm in the valley now.   Not a lot of work near 7k feet up....   But radio was amazing up there!

--Shane
KD6VXI

[W6TOM]

 Looking back at my pictures I was down there in 2011, went to Pampa Peak, the road to the site is off of Hwy 58 before you get to the summit of the pass and then 10 or 15 miles of dirt road. I had a local tech from Bakersfield lead the way, I had an engineer with me from the Bay Area too. We were going to go back that weekend  and come back the next week but decided to work Saturday and get it done. The place we stayed at in Bakersfield had no rooms for Friday night, they were all taken by Cal Fire, so had to stay at another place.

 The next day we went to a peak over in the coast range near Maricopa, we were done at noon. I drove out on Hwy 166 to Hwy 101 and back to Oakland, a LOT of driving!!

[WB2EMS]

Some beautiful country in those pictures, but the burn areas are pretty impressive too.

Going through the shack the total damage so far is Flex 5000 is bricked, draws a constant 3.5 amps when powered up, 2 computers one on the flex and one on the sdr, 2 meter amp, 2 meter transverter - all connected to the blown astron power supply with the flex. More testing to come. Kind of depressing.      TV antenna lead looks to be blasted free of the antenna. And a window in the basement near where the coax was grounded was blown in!   

I've noticed that my more timid cat has taken to sleeping as far from the couch and window that was his usual perch as possible. The strike grounded about 2 feet from where he usually sleeps. Poor guy. I'll bet that was a shock and a fright. Glad I wasn't home. I'd probably be curled up with him! 

[W6TOM]

 At least you weren't home or had a fire, I wonder if Home Owner's Insurance will cover your loss??

  A few years ago I was given a mobile repeater to send back to the factory for repair, it was used by a transmission line crew to provide temporary communications in a remote area while they reconductored the circuit. They place it on top of a transmission tower with a helicopter each morning and then remove it at the end of the shift and charge the batteries over night.

 It got hit by lightning, this is a $15,000 piece of equipment, I immediately smelled the burnt electronics when it was given to me. Called the manufacturer and they told me to send it in for an evaluation. It cost around $6,000 to repair and the transmission line department were not happy when we gave them the bill !! But.... Its your repeater!!!

[w1vtp]

Looking back at my pictures I was down there in 2011, went to Pampa Peak, the road to the site is off of Hwy 58 before you get to the summit of the pass and then 10 or 15 miles of dirt road. I had a local tech from Bakersfield lead the way, I had an engineer with me from the Bay Area too. We were going to go back that weekend  and come back the next week but decided to work Saturday and get it done. The place we stayed at in Bakersfield had no rooms for Friday night, they were all taken by Cal Fire, so had to stay at another place.

 The next day we went to a peak over in the coast range near Maricopa, we were done at noon. I drove out on Hwy 166 to Hwy 101 and back to Oakland, a LOT of driving!!

Beautiful country

[WA2SQQ]

Go through home owners. Most cover lightning damage