All the discussions about static build up remind me of something that
happened abt. 20 years ago when I was quite active in HF contesting :
We were putting up some antennas at the club station to run one of the
major contests. One of our club members worked for a contructor and could
convince him to put 2 mobile towers (cranes) near the clubhouse, each 50m
high and 100m apart so we could place a 160m dipole at 50m above ground
(would have been a nice LF antenna). The coax end of the coax was laying on
the roof of a (polyester) caravan when one of the club members wanted to
connect it to the tranceiver. When he reached for the coax and his hand was
still about 10cm from the coax there was a large arc (between hand and
coax). He hadn't any burns, so current must have been minimal, but it was
quite impressive (the poor guy wasn't seen near any coax cable for a long
time).
The above occured on a calm winter day, no thunderstorm arround, so imagine
what statics can built up in summer.
Based on that I decided never ever to leave a coax connected to a
'floating' wire antenna in the shack. The arcs probably won't hurt anyone,
but they could start a fire.
73, Rik ON7YD
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