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

Chris Albertson albertson.chris at gmail.com
Thu Apr 12 16:49:52 UTC 2012


On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 3:08 PM, Bob Camp <lists at rtty.us> wrote:
> Hi
>
> If the antenna is no higher than your house, it's no more likely to get hit than the house.
> If it's higher than the house by a few feet, the increase in hit probability is vanishingly small.

Antenna do not have to be directly hit to destroy the receiver.  Let's
say that something 100 feet away is hit.  The nearby strike is
thousands of amps of current in a brief pulse.  What you have is
a strong electromagnetic field pulse.  This will induce current in any
nearby conductor, including your antenna mast, power lines, phone
lines and even the copper traces on a PCB.   The effects vary based on
the geometry.    One does not even worry about a direct hit.  It is
rare and if it happens your equipment is vaporized.  But near hits
happen all the time you can expect them and they are mostly the cause
of damaged equipment and it is actually posable to protect against a
nearby hit.

Think of lightening like a 1,000 pound bomb.  If one falls from the
sky on a city and hits you on the head you are dead.  But most of the
people effected by the bomb did NOT get hit on the head and were
varying distances from it and for most of them various protection
measures can be very effective.

Redondo Beach, California



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