At the club shack.  All the 24/7 VHF gear, IRLP, Echolink, off the air.  One item, I think APRS, was hooked
temporarily to a mag mount stuck on a sheet metal panel of some sort as a ground plane.  It was hooked
up like that as its antenna was damaged a few weeks ago due to a bad storm, broken in half.  (Cushcraft
fiberglass, don't remember model right off.)

All three Polyphasers may be toast.  Or may be OK... now I see... they are supposed to block DC and pass
RF.  They may be OK.

The VHF radios and computers are screwed up, that's for sure.

Fortunately the HF rigs are fine.  They are ALWAYS unplugged from both antennas and power when not in
use.  I don't mean just turning off the power supplies.  The power supplies are unplugged from the wall power.

Dang!

What's your lightning protection setup like?

 thus the reason I have spent the last few weeks beefing up my grounding system for my tiny at home shack.  Right now I only run a dipole in the tree in the front yard but I have it grounded at the tree and also before it enters the house.  My next step is bonding the entrance ground rod to the service entrance rod and the telco ground rod.  I already have the wire and the hole dug.  Hopefully this weekend I can get it done.  The summer storms are almost upon us.  

I hope the damage is minimal or easily repaired.

Are you using 3/4" copper rods? Or three 3/4" rods that are cadwelded together?

For now I have a 5/8" 8ft rod at the tree.  3 coax cables are attached to polyphaser arrestors.  That rod is clamped with 3 inch strap buried and run to the shack entrance.  At the shack entrance I have a 5/8" 8ft rod.  The other end of the strap attaches to it.  From that, I am going to be running 3 inch to my single point ground bus with polyphaser arrestors, and equipment grounds etc.  The shack ground is going to have #4 wire ran around the end of the house to the service entrance rod, and then over to the telco rod.  Both appear to be 5/8".  I cannot cadweld these as much as I would like.  The service entrance ground is directly below the wires and conduit running to the detached garage.  

This may help.  

Sorry to hear it, i was sitting in the house with TV's and everything off waiting to get hit after i got off work . it was streaking down all around us with no delay from seeing the streak and then the kaboom.

We have the Polyphasers mounted on a big copper buss about 1/4" thick.  It is tied back to ground with some
wide 1-1/4" - 1-1/2" copper braid.  All of the radios on that side of the room (VHF gear) grounds are attached to
that buss.

On the other side, the HF side of the room, there is a long, about 4', copper buss, 1/4"  thick x 2" wide, with
multiple holes drilled and tapped.  All gear, power supplies, tuners, radios, tie to that buss with 1/2" copper
braid ground straps.  From there it has a wide copper braid that ties in the the main one (same as coming
from the VHF side) through the wall and out to the tower, just a few feet on the other side of the wall of the
radio room.  That ground system was put in by a former member (the SK who gave us the amp and stuff)
who was not only a licensed electrician and ham, but also former Fire Chief.  One of the fire station buildings,
has his name in memorial on the front of the station.  I think he knew what he was doing.

From there the ground strap goes down the leg of the tower (Rohn BX series) and connects to three ground
rods spread out in a big triangle.  I know they are at least 8' long.  We had to stand on the tailgate of a pickup
and the tallest member got them half in while I drizzled water around the hole where the rod was being driven
and worked in.  Not cad welded, but big copper clamps with copper goop.

No, nothing further could have been done to prevent this.

On the other hand, no fire, nothing charred inside.  All the damage is outside.  Nothing visible on the ground
system from the busses on down to the ground.  Probably not a direct hit.

We've had a series of very violent storms come across Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana in the last month.  So
noisy at night that we've had to cancel about half of the evening nets on 75 m.

We had one blow through that when it got to New Orleans it blew some train cars and containers off the Huey
P. Long bridge!

No such thing.

We have a grounding system.

Nothing protects in a direct hit.


PolyPhaser IS-50UX-C0 - PolyPhaser Coaxial Lightning Protectors

Very true.   I figure I will probably not get a direct hit.  The trees on the hill are going to get hit the hardest.  Its the trailing streamers that will find my antenna.  I also want to protect against Power Company and neighbors doing something stupid causing feedback etc.

Sorry this happened to your club station. It looks like you guys have a very nice ham club over there.
You are correct although communications towers often get hit but continue running. A grounding system capable of taking a direct hit may cost half of an average house.
Polyphasers do protect from damage caused by nearby strikes and from static caused by wind and snow. I had a nearby strike once. The lightning hit a tree 150 yards away. It destroyed a cheaper MFJ coax protector on my Cushcraft R8 vertical. Polyphaser on my other coax (for a dipole) was fine. My FT1000 was connected to the Polyphaser at the moment and was fine as well. It sounded like a cannon going off right next to my window. My phone started ringing and all smoke detectors were beeping. I'm glad it was not a direct hit.
My new tower is the highest structure within at least a mile. I always disconnect all coax cables and the rotor control cable and keep the cables at least 4 feet away from anything conductive in the shack. I have Polyphasers on all coax cables as well as the rotor cable but don't want to take my chances.

...   I kid, i kid...

I think we, as a club with limited resources, did everything we reasonably were able to do.  I don't know
of anything else we could have done to prevent this from happening.  All we can do is replace the
equipment.

We get more than 90" of rain a year, sometimes over 100", and most of that rain is accompanied
by lightning.

I bet there is a large, 12V deep cycle, lead acid battery inside of that Halo "Suppressor" gismo.
It looks like another "snake oil" remedy. It's impossible to prevent a lightning strike with conventional means. There are ways to deduce a chance of a strike or to redirect the discharge energy through a safe path to ground by installing multiple lightning rods with sharp pointed ends to improve ionization. I've seen lightning rods with radioactive pellets installed near the very top to facilitate better ionization. I've been working as an EE for 20 years but have never heard of the "HALO" suppressors that guarantee 100% elimination of direct lightning strikes. It's physically impossible, IMHO (In My Humble Opinion).

Get me a wish list and I'll see what I have in the stash. I know of a spare 2m/70cm j-pole and a supply of LMR-400 sitting around the attic antenna garden.

Damn it.  I knew I forgot something in my drawing.  I have 2 AGM deep cycle batteries on the front porch that do the actual powering of my radios I should run the lighting protection through them.  Then I will be...   nah, can't do it. I don't want some poor newbie read this and think its a good idea.  

Is your club not covered under the ARRL insurance policy?

Yes, we are covered by ARRL insurance.

Thanks for the offer, Hank.  Right now we are still trying to figure out just what is damaged and where.  

We have plenty of LMR-400 available.  

Tomorrow is antenna party / club work day.  We have a man lift rented, will be putting up a new Yaesu
thrust bearing, mounts, aluminum pipe to rotate the antennas up to via the relocated rotator, which
will be at eye level about 5' off the ground.

My assignment is wrangling coax and soldering on PL-259s.

Jup

If damage is unavoidable, that's exactly where you want it.

Sounds like your "lightning damage mitigation system" did its job.

Sorry you had those problems.  When we lost our 140 ft tower and antennas to a tornado our club just asked a member to bring his manlift when we were erecting our new 100 ft tower.  They seem to expect free use of it for field day, VHF contests and antenna repairs.  



Installing the TH-11DX on the new 100 ft tower before the crane lifted it the rest of the way up.

If you were closer your club might even get to use it.





 

We are a VERY active club, get a lot of community recognition.  Since we are on the Gulf Coast and we are in the
middle of "hurricane alley" everyone understands we can be an important link to the outside world "when all else
fails".

We do 6 to 8 special event stations a year, portable ops, not hidden in the station.  People know who we are, what
we do.  "Come on over here, have a seat.  Here, put these headphones on and listen in.  What we're doing is..."  or
"Right now I'm talking to a university club in Michigan.  I logged Boy Scouts at a camp in North Carolina a little while
ago."  People get it.  They know land line and cell phone is not as reliable as the TV ads would have you believe.

Many times when we're looking for hardware, etc, "We're with the amateur radio club and we're trying to hook up..."
and we often get discounts or other special considerations.  We have a big rental manlift that was delivered yesterday
afternoon which we'll use Saturday, and if we need, Sunday, and the rental outfit will pick it up Monday.  We were
charged a modest fee for a one-day rental but have it two days plus.

A local company donated all the LMR-400 we could need, more if we want it.  100' lengths left over from 500' reels from
other installation work they did.  Another source gave us stainless steel ty-wraps, and we have a source of soft hose
we can cut and split to protect tie points of the coax.

We get an amazing amount of help and consideration from the community, for which we are certainly blessed.

That makes our measly little Moseley 10-15-20 meter Tribander look rather inadequate.  

I have a Mosley TA33 at home that has been down since I moved to the farm.  Had it at 60 ft earlier.  It may be going up at 40 ft later this summer.



I have done very well QRP using my IC-703+ and that TH-11DX in some contests.  It seemed like that made me equivalent to a lot of 100 watt stations.
 

Just got home from a very busy club work day.

We think some of the VHF gear is OK.  Antenna for APRS is OK, coax is toast, but we have another
100' of LMR-400 we can use there, and hook up tomorrow.  We still have the manlift.

We got up the mounting plate with new Yaesu thrust bearing, mounting plate for a center homebrew
Delrin bearing, and 5' off the ground, a mounting plate and placed the rotator there.

The guys CNC machine cut the mounting plates (and did their own programming for that) from 1/2"
aluminum sheet.  Yes, overkill, but given to us.  The rotator is mounted low where we can actually
work on it.  There is 2" aluminum pipe going up now from the rotator to the stinger on top, which has
the Moseley 10-15-20 Tribander, 2m beam, and 2m vertical.  Previously the rotator was up near the
top of the tower.  We used 2" aluminum pipe as a driveshaft going from rotator to stinger.

They had made the hole for the Delrin 2" diameter.  The driveshaft pipe is 2"...  but that is ID, not OD.  
I took the bearing pieces home (two halves, split, with slotted holes to be adjustable) and ground out
the holes with a Dremel Tool and mill bit by hand so that it fit the 2-3/8" OD of the aluminum pipe.  
Perfect fit, of course.

From rotator to beams, all put up and ready to go.  

While they were doing that, another club member and I were pulling coax, measuring, making new
coax, soldering plugs on one end (for the inside), shoving the unterminated ends through holes in the
wall, pulling coax through, back into the club shack to solder on the other plug.  Made up 8 pieces of
coax.

In the morning we run the coax up the tower, screw those together, waterproof / wrap them.  Then we
hoist the 75 meter dipole and 80 m OCFD back up, tie off the ends.  We still have to make one more
section of coax for one of the VHF antennas, it was toast due to the lightning.

Then probably an hour of clean up, picking up tape, insultion, other trimmings and trash, run the vacuum,
go outside and police the area of all trash out there.

Should be back in business for the most part.  Hope to have more news on the VHF gear and lightning
damage.

The tower work was already planned, parts ordered, new coax, all that, due to the old thrust bearing
freezing up (we figure at least 30 yrs old).  The lightning strike was just an extra monkey wrench in
the works.

This whole month has been a bust for me, as far as getting on the air.  We've had lightning and thunderstorms almost every day. They are going on right now, and supposed to last all day tomorrow, too. I've had my shack completely powered down most of the month, and there is no end sight.  The water level at the lake about a mile from my house, has risen 27 feet in the last two months.

At least the drought is over for us.

Real-Time Lighting Map

Lake fattyfat is about to hit the spillway. I think I am west of you by 30 miles. I too, can't get my temporary hf antenna deployed.

knowing that the storms from TX were heading this way I made a point of getting the grounding project completed yesterday.  

I did learn something the hard way.  I had my head down in the hole trying to clean one of the existing rods down to bare copper.  I started off using a rock to scrape off the mud.   Then I use sand paper and emery cloth.  I kept scraping and sanding what I thought was oxidation off.  It finally hit me that the telephone company had used a galvanized rod instead of copper.  Doh...

At least some of the problem has been the ^#$#&@*^ LMR-400 coax.  It is very difficult to solder the
braid on the PL-259s.  No problem with the tip.  I had to redo several ends put on by another member,
and two I put on.

We have some of the VHF gear up and running now.

The rotator and new drive line are mounted.  All of that went well.  The rotator is down at 5' off the ground
where it can be easily worked on.  All of the weight of the 2" aluminum pipe is borne by the new thrust
bearing at the top of the tower.  There is a middle bearing on that pipe to keep it from bending in the
middle.  It is made from Delrin sheet, cut to a triangle shape and split.  The two halves have slotted
holes so they can be adjusted a bit.  That worked out perfectly.

We have all coax run outside, pieces of split hose going over any place where there is possible abrasion,
bundled with plastic ty-wraps, but strapped to the inside of the tower leg with stainless steel ties.  

We have the 75 m dipole up, but have a pulley problem on the OCFD line.  Will get that fixed in the next
day or two.  

We lost half a day of man lift use due to being under a tornado watch, wind coming up, and an approaching
storm.

You need a soldering iron with a lot of heat mass to properly solder the braid. Also tinning the braid before screwing the cable into the PL259 connector helps a lot.

If you move your antennas to northern Indiana I will donate the use of my lift.



 

I've soldered plenty of PL-259s on large coax.  I have the right soldering gun.  This coax
is just hard to solder the shield.  

I've since found several videos where they bring the shield down over the jacket, screw on
the PL-259 until the insulation just begins to show through the holes.  Then they trim off
all exposed braid.  Next they screw on the PL-259 a little further until the insulator is at
the top of the holes.  The ends of the braid are all now under the plug body.  Finally, the
tip is soldered.

The braid to PL-259 body is the mechanical contact only.

I'm going to try that next time.

I've soldered many PL-259 in the field when no large soldering iron was available. I stripped the insulation all the way to the back of the connector, loosened the shield braid and straightened the strands with a needle. I twisted the strands to form three or four large strands and soldered them to the outside of the connector. 3M rubber splicing tape followed  by good electrical tape sealed the connector. It worked very well. You would not notice any performance degradation unless it's used for gigahertz frequencies.

I don't have a picture to show you but I found a similar one, except I straighten the strands to form several larger "wires" and solder then on the outside. It's quicker that way too. I would never use crimped coax connectors, especially when it may be exposed to the elements (even with a good coax seal).
Here I found a website describing this technique. LINK

I've seen that before, but worry about water getting into the braid.

Here it the technique I've seen I plan to try.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiwyYehyD4M

BTW, Amphenol makes PL-259 connectors with two larger slots instead of small holes. They are much easier to solder.