Text 2510, 88 rader
Skriven 2015-06-20 07:53:58 av Mike Luther (1:117/100.0)
   Kommentar till text 2499 av Mark Hofmann (1:261/1304)
Ärende: Re: UPS units and Lightni
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Hi Mark!

You and the others are I think sorta lucky...

 MH> When I was around 10 years old, I was looking outside my bedroom window 
 MH> during a storm and lightning hit our garage right in 
 MH> front of me.  All I saw was white light and an instant 
 MH> VERY loud boom.  

 MH> The lightning had hit the corner of our garage and 
 MH> caught it on fire.  I had to go out there and put it 
 MH> out with the hose.  I'll never forget that one!

I too first got introduced to lightning at about 10 years of age when I first
started fooling with radio beginning with crystal sets.  Incidentally I still
have my original cat-whisker crystal that I used with the coil wound on an
oatmeal box here in the same room I am typing this message, chortle.  At any
rate, I've been closely nudged by lightning 29 times at the last count.  My
airplane has been hit directly six times.  The Research Vessel Hidalgo for the
Oceanography Departmemt of Texas A&M on which I eventually got my FCC First
Class Marine Radio Telegraph Operator license was hit eight times when I was on
it.  Yes, the radio shack was up on the top of the vessel right behind the
captain's room.  Twice while I was in Houston walking on Main Street downtown
while I *HAD* to so for emergency reasons, a power line pole next to me was hit
directly!  As the Chief Engineer for WTAW radio here in College Station for
years just out of high school here my special knowledge about lightning strike
damage suppression by individual construction for radial wire lobe creation to
carry the hits to the ground surface eventually helped stop damage from MANY
strikes that hit even the power lines that ran the station as well as the 256
foot high tower for it.

My main type ham radio interest for my still W5WQN call and the Extra Class
license I got at 13 years of age in 1952 has always been on CW 40 meter work
only.  That eventually got me 300 40 meter only CW country QSL cards for my
original only ever in the history of the ARRL initial application for my 40
meter CW DXCC award.  The antenna array out at our family remote site with even
four tower 80 meter vertical phased array systems I use is hit directly an
average of about three times a year.  With my special work for suppression
grounding for everything, including a complete ground radial grid with multiple
dispersion radial spikes on it around the whole house, the last damage I have
ever taken from this was back in I think 1974.  However the worst strike I was
personally involved in was out there when I was asleep in bed about 2AM.  The
strike blew me out of the bed on the floor!  That's when I put in the ring
ground line around the whole place.  And by the way - the normal power line
ground spike at the meter is a joke when it comes to lightning.

At A&M Consolidated High School here in College Station as a freshman, I was
going to dance classes at Texas A&M here.  I was very attracted to a beautiful
girl who was a WONDERFUL dance partner.  We went toward the top of the heap in
the class until one day when lightning hit the Memorial Student Center during a
class.  This girl was from a major cattle ranch down near Navasota about twenty
miles away.  After the BOOM I told her about my close calls with lightning even
back then,  She ran away from me and never came back to the classes!  Later I
found out why.  Her Dad was blown off his horse and killed riding home trying
to get out of a storm by a lightning bolt!  Their ranch wound up as being the
cattle auction operation for Navasota.  I cried when I found out this.

Key UPS advice to all folks here.  You should NEVER use any UPS that does not
use an actual iron core power transformer in it to isolate the entire protected
side of the power it protects through the pig-iron core!  The reason is that a
lightning stroke can't really whop things across the pig-iron core!  If you
EVER use any item with a switching power supply for the DC voltage it gives you
direct from the power source line, that is a guaranteed suicide for whatever
you thing it is protecting.  For years now I have always used only the APC
Smart protection units that have the pig-iron transformers in them.  There are
other reasons to Feed-The-Pig beyond money investments, chuckle!

As well, if you are using a major huge rack system for lots of stuff, one of
the best protection methods you can use is to install even a many KW pig-iron
isolation transformer and feed the whole system of computers, printers and
everyting else behind it.  With ABSOLUTELY surge protected ground connections
on the whole powerline stuff behind it that are *NEVER* allowed to touch the
standard ground pin or anything connected to it in the whole house.

And remember a lightning bolt is *NOT* just electricity as most people likely
think!  It is a RADIO WAVE.  Which can vary in quarter wave length amounts
during a strike from even over 250 feet at the start of a strike down to even
only six or eight feet, depending on the frequency of the bolt that chances
during the split second it whops whataver!  That's why on the same power line
in your house, sometimes your computer gets blown away while ten feet away your
radio, TV or music set doesn't!  Voltage and current swap in peaks every
quarter wave down the metal that carries the radio wave.


Mike Luther as NC117 from 1:117/100 and still W5WQN.

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 * Origin: BV HUB CLL(979)696-3600 (1:117/100)