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LF: Lightning Story

To: [email protected]
Subject: LF: Lightning Story
From: Bill de Carle <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 13:24:59 -0400
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A couple of nights ago a thunderstorm came through here just after we had gone to bed. We thought the storm had passed but then there was a very loud bang. I heard the crackle and sizzle of electricity and the boom almost simultaneously. A few minutes later fire trucks came so I got up to investigate. Turns out the bolt hit a tall pine tree on my neighbour's property. What remained of the tree was on fire. Our telephone was not working but the mains power stayed on. I thought for sure the next morning I'd have to replace blown out parts. At the time of the lightning strike my antennas were disconnected (outdoors) from the house because we knew the storm was coming. I was concerned about a preamp for some VLF loops back in the woods and a newly-installed mini-whip (J-310 front end) on the garage roof. I measured the distance to where the lightning hit: 150 M from the struck tree to the mini-whip and 200 M to the loop preamp. I checked the preamp first: it was dead. Burned IC (TL084, I could still detect the smell in the morning). When I tested the mini-whip I was amazed it still worked fine! The loop has protective diodes (1N4148) across the hi-Z ends and those diodes also survived the strike, which was unexpected. Starting at the base of the struck pine tree one notices a newly-made straight line trench in the ground (about 30 M long) heading towards the nearby river. Evidently the current was making its way to the water. I'm wondering why the mini-whip (closer to the strike) survived but the TL084 did not. The preamp drives a buried cable (about 50 M) to my radio shack. That cable (no DC path to ground at either end) runs in a direction parallel to the trench made by the lightning but displaced at least 100 M. Could enough voltage be induced to burn up a TL084?

Bill VE2IQ



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