Foundations of Amateur Radio

In the past I've talked about our hobby and lightning. I've done it on more than one occasion, talked about cows and lightning strikes, about earth bonding and the dangers associated with lightning that's not directly overhead, but close enough to matter.

On the weekend I learned the difference between saying something and seeing something.

A group of Amateurs, went out camping, about two hours from anywhere in the middle of the bush to participate in an annual field day. We'd set-up our various overnight shelters, erected two marquees and proceeded to construct our portable shack. We were there for two nights. On the first night, the heavens opened up and the rain poured down, soaking the ground good and proper. We were lucky, our camp was at the top of a hill and drainage was great. At one point in the middle of the night I was standing outside in the rain, getting wet while attending to some ablutions - an unforgettable experience, but I digress.

The next day the camp was in full swing. We were on air and operating, making contacts, despite the poor levels of propagation. We'd erected an 80m dipole, 40m of wire in the air, a 2m vertical, a G5RV antenna and some other wire antennas. Each of these had a piece of coax coming into the marquee and strung along the roof made their way to the appropriate radio.

At that point the sky turned grey and thunder was heard. It was still dry, no actual activity overhead, or even within anything that could be considered nearby. As a precaution we disconnected our coax and settled down to wait for the impending storm. It never came. Other amateurs and house-holders were not so lucky, experiencing flooding and damage that was described as epic.

Meanwhile back at our portable shack, we decided that it would be smart to separate power and coax a little. We started by pulling back the coax and moving it back into the roof space of the marquee. At one point, one of our team had his hand on the metal marquee frame and pulled at the coax connector that was feeding the 80m dipole. The next moment a crack was heard, he jumped. He's experienced a significant discharge between his hand and the coax.

Remember, it's not raining, there's a grey sky and thunder can be heard in the distance.

Looking back, I still cannot believe that between us, five Amateurs with a combined experience level of about 90 years between us, moving coax around while there was lightning in the air. What were we thinking?

We were very lucky last weekend. It could have been much, much worse.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB