Not another theoretical piece about lightning damage. This is for real.
Last night we had a bad storm for about an hour - I even saw QRN dots on my
cable TV.
At 0000 UTC there was a huge bang and the air smelled of burning. The
mains power went off for a second but came back.
The antenna was undamaged, but my 136kHz pre-amp is not working and,
more seriously, the mains socket that runs the 'shack' has no power on it. The
fuses are fine so I suspect the wiring or the double socket!
All domestic applicances are safe, including the computer which was running
at the time.
The antenna runs into a toroidal transformer so is always earthed and DC
isolated from the Tx/Rx. I presume that the nearby lightning strike induced
enough 136kHz RF into the resonant antenna to blow the pre-amp up. This is
spark transmission at its most powerful.
More info when I have done a post-mortem (autopsy).
Mike, G3XDV (IO91VT)
http://www.lf.thersgb.net
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