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

[shalimr9 at gmail.com]

Michael,

There is a very effective fix: move!
:)

I live in NW Florida and I believe I have found a good solution to the lightning problem. 

Since lightning never strikes the same place twice (or so goes conventional wisdom), I built my 60' antenna tower a few feet from the exact spot where a tree had been destroyed by lightning 5 years prior. That was 20 years ago, so far, so good...

Didier KO4BB

Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless thingy while I do other things...

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael Baker <mpb45 at clanbaker.org>
Sender: time-nuts-bounces at febo.com
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2012 08:50:24 
To: <time-nuts at febo.com>
Reply-To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
	<time-nuts at febo.com>
Subject: [time-nuts] Best location for a GPS antenna...?

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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