"Wayne" wrote in message
...
Hello,

I understand single wire antenna wires should be grounded. I have also
heard it is a good idea to put a lightening arrestor on them. Can someone
tell me a good type of lightening arrestor to get and how they are
connected, please ?

Wayne

Hey Wayne,

When I built a homebrew RF amplifier to help pick up weak SW signals, I put
something together that I have actually seen work when lightening struck
somewhere nearby. It consisted of a neon indicator light going from the
wire carrying the incoming signal to grount, and in parrallel with this I
put a 10K resistor (to bleed off static electricity at voltages below that
which would activate the neon indicator) and two 1N4001 diodes, configured
so that if one did not conduct the other would (picture two arrows sitting
next to each other and pointing in opposite directions.) Again, all of
these were in parrallel going from signal to ground, and then I put a .1uF
1000V ceramic disk capacitor going from the signal side of all this to the
input of my amplifier (or to the input to the radio, in your case.)

The theory is that the incoming signal will pass by all of this and go
through the .1uF capacitor to your radio, but a high-voltage pulse, such as
static electricity from someone touching the antenna wire or a nearby
lightening strike, will be stopped by the .1uF 1000V capacitor (make sure it
is a ceramic disk) and will be discharged by the neon indicator and one or
the other of the diodes, with tiny remnants of the pulse being blead off by
the 10K resistor. Now, please understand , I am no expert (which someone
will no doubt point out) but I actually saw this work one time when I was
listening to a SW station while a storm approached. I did not disconnect my
equipment before the storm got too close, and finally lightening struck
nearby and the neon indicator lit up for an instant. That convinced me it
was time! And I say that this whole thing worked because even though my
antenna picked up the pulse, it was discharged and my equipment did not
suffer any negative consequences. I saw the neon indicator light up
briefly, and when putting this thing together that was something I never
actually expected to see.

In my opinion, the only thing one has to worry about with this setup is
losing some signal through the diodes, the PN junctions of which act as
small capacitors connecting the signal line to ground. But I have not come
up with an answer to that yet. Nothing is perfect...

If this interests you, write to me and I will email the schematic for it.

Hope this helps. Take it easy...

Dave