[time-nuts] Lightning strikes vs GPS antennas

Michael Baker mpb45 at clanbaker.org
Sun Jul 4 15:31:11 UTC 2010


Time-Nutters--

The 5-year Flash Density Map of the USA provided by
the National Weather Service indicates that my county
here in N. Central Florida experiences "16 and up"
strikes/sq-km/year.

< http://www.weather.gov/os/lightning/images/map.pdf >

Experience bears this out...

I live on 6 heavily wooded acres and have had at least
6 trees struck and killed somewhere on my property
over the last several years.

I make it a faithful practice to disconnect antennas
from any gear during the frequent thunderstorms we
experience.

I have considered fastening a GPS antenna on the end of
a 12 foot fiberglass pole and installing it in the top
of one of the trees next to my workshop building so that
it has a clear 360 deg sky view down to within a few
degrees of the horizon.

It would be nice to come up with some way to use fiber
optics to isolate the GPS antenna from the receiver.
Coming up with a solar panel and battery to isolate the
antenna and RF preamp power is no big deal but coming up
with a way to isolate the RF via fiber is more problematic.

Any thoughts/comments on this...?

Thanks!!

Mike Baker
Micanopy, FL
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