[time-nuts] Best location for a GPS antenna...?

Michael Baker mpb45 at clanbaker.org
Wed Apr 11 12:50:24 UTC 2012


Time-Nutters--

My workshop is surrounded by tall trees (70 to 80 ft).  There
is no easy way to place my T-Bolt antenna above the tree-top
foliage.   Since choke-ring antennas do not provide much benefit
for dealing with multi-path that originates from directly above
the antenna I have considered putting the antenna on a 10-ft
pole and mounting the pole in the top of the nearby trees so
as to have the antenna just above the tree-top foliage.

However, here in north-central Florida lightning is a serious
problem.   In the 12 years we have lived here, 3 trees have
been hit within 75 meters of my workshop building behind
my house.

Here is a DropBox link to a map of lightning-strike-days
in USA locations:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/60102282/Lightning%20Isokeraunic%20map.JPG

I have a number of VHF and UHF antennas mounted on my
workshop building but when not in use, they are kept
disconnected where they enter the building.

I have thought about finding some way to bring the GPS
RF signal into my workshop via an optical fiber interface
and sacrifice the RF to optical fiber interface if lightning
strikes it in a treetop but have not found a way to implement
this idea.

Two years ago lightning struck a neighbor's TV antenna
mounted on a pole attached to the side of his house and
started a fire in one of their 2nd floor bedrooms which
did a lot of damage before it was put out.  The tower
was well grounded and the coax leading into the room
was fed through a grounded lightning protector but none
of these precautions prevented the fire from the lightning
strike.

Any list folks have ideas on this?

Mike Baker  WA4HFR
Gainesville/Micanopy, Fla







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