Peak & Tune?

" So in my case, a quick T&P did help my radio, because the increase in receiver sensitivity was the equivalent to adding a much more efficient antenna, and made the radio capable of talking about as far as it can hear."

VERY INTERESTING .......

Now the only CB's I deal with are my own .... I do test them on my IFR-1200S at the shop but never have found any to be very out of tune .... I know the front end mods I made to the grant LT took the MDS from about .7 down to .4 UV ...
As soon as I can see well enough to build several mast mounted preamps I got sitting here we shall see it thats worth the time .... or just lighting bait ......

 

In the part of Alaska where I had my shop, I only saw lightning 3 times in over 20 years, as we were right on Cook Inlet, so the air was almost moist. Hardly anyone spent the money for elaborate lightning protection except at the most remote, helo-only accessible locations. But when I worked inland in northern Idaho, lightning was a couple-of-times-a-week affair, and all the repeater sites had lots & lots of lightning protection. One of our techs had worked in southern Florida, and he swore by those little spiny/bristly static dissipators, said they put them on every single antenna tip. They cut the incidence of strikes down to less than 3% of the other companies' gear that didn't have them, and some of the stuff he maintained were for the "Scary Black Helicopter" agencies. If your tower top preamps are GaAsFets, I'd go ahead and spend the $25 or so (each) from some place like Grumpy's and know that you're pretty well immune to attracting strikes. If all your antennas are DC grounded, you *might* get away with one on the top of the tower, on a short extension to make sure it's the highest thing on the tower.
Worth considering, anyway, unless you're getting a great deal on preamp parts. Here in NC, I've had three instances (in these three years) where my home-grown RG-58 "lightning fuses" have saved my antennas AND my gear.
73, and keep an eye to the sky.....
-- Handlebar --
diddlly dahdidah

 

" If your tower top preamps are GaAsFets, I'd go ahead and spend the $25 or so (each) from some place like Grumpy's and know that you're pretty well immune to attracting strikes. "

I can't find them ......

Tampabay is ground zero for lighting so if you can find them I will look into it ....

Yep GaASFET they are rated at 1.5 db noise at 24 db gain coax has about 2 db of loss so puting the amp at the antenna should result in a big drop in the nose floor .... ( MDS ) ....at least on paper .....

 

You could get creative with the bristles from wire brushes and aircraft type hose clamps, and make some. You are looking to create many corona points which bleed the electrostatic field buildup rapidly. This makes it more difficult for the lightning step leader to 'see' your tower, a condition required for the main lightning arc to form.

 

Yep now if we could just find a way to channel that bolt to congress and get them moving on fixing problems ....

 

Sorry, I was thinking of the wrong source. Here's the page for them at The Wireman (in South Carolina -- I've gotten most of my Copperweld for longwires and loops from them):
Item # 8741 (or 8742 if you've got patience and leather gloves) http://thewireman.com/ground.html#857
As Outlaw says above, they're coronal discharge devices, intended to create an ionized cloud around themselves and allow the potential difference between the ground and the clouds to equalize over a fairly wide area, kinda like keeping a capacitor leaky on a very large scale.
I'm also reminded of an article in either 73 or QST from about 30 years ago, talking about the then-common "Blitz Bug" inline lightning arrestors. They went inline in your coax, and had a small gap inside the shell to a threaded stud which one was supposed to tie to a low impedance qround lead, with the idea that a lightning strike to whatever was hooked to that coax aloft would jump the gap and go to ground, rather than continuing down the rest of the coax with cataclysmic results in the shack. In the article that kinda de-bunked the product, he said, "You have to remember that a lightning strike is a couple of million volts at several hundred thousands amps. Do you really think that that kind of discharge, after traveling through a couple of miles of dry air, is going to be fooled by a quarter-inch gap at the rig end of your coax?"
I "have" used PolyPhaser arrestors with the ionizable gas cartridges in them with success at commercial mountaintop sites. Here at the house my main HF antenna is a 360-ft loop at about 65 feet up, with balanced feeders that I can short together to make a very wide single element, working against ground through a transmatch. On the outside of the house, though, the balanced feeders go through a DPDT knife switch that takes both conductors in a pretty straight path to the 3 eight-foot copperclad steel ground rods with copper ribbon connecting them all just underground, and my VHF antennas are similarly switchable to the ground plate that's CadWelded® onto the post closest to the house.
Any time I'm not on the air, or if I'm leaving the house, everything outside gets switched to the ground array, and the quick-disconnect coaxial connectors inside get pulled from the MFJ window passthrough.
A fair bit of my shack is antique stuff, lovingly restored, and I'm loathe to let them turn into balls of molten metal if I can prevent it.
-- Handlebar --
diddly dahdidah

 

" I'm also reminded of an article in either 73 or QST from about 30 years ago, talking about the then-common "Blitz Bug" inline lightning arrestors. They went inline in your coax, and had a small gap inside the shell to a threaded stud which one was supposed to tie to a low impedance qround lead, with the idea that a lightning strike to whatever was hooked to that coax aloft would jump the gap and go to ground, rather than continuing down the rest of the coax with cataclysmic results in the shack. In the article that kinda de-bunked the product, he said, "You have to remember that a lightning strike is a couple of million volts at several hundred thousands amps. Do you really think that that kind of discharge, after traveling through a couple of miles of dry air, is going to be fooled by a quarter-inch gap at the rig end of your coax?"

"Blitz Bug " = distroyed radios .....

I had one in line years ago and after the hit all that was left was a blob of aluminum.

I have a few that I have restored this is one a 1962 LITTLT LULU only 250 were made ....

 

Sweet rig -- glad you got it running again.
Life is good
-- Handlebar --
diddly dahdidah

 

The BEST thing you can do for your radio is get a decent antenna. Wilson 2000 or Firestik are completely acceptable; my preference being the 2000 primarily because the whip doesn't break (generally) when you hit the trees as you run down some side road going to the motel.

 

Hey any of you guys ever built a Tesla Coil??? (just thought of that reading this thread....)