lightning protection

[rondall swart]

does anyone have lightning problems? i'm working on getting my ham ticket and i haul fuel. the setup i'm looking at is about a 1,200.00 and worryed about lightning because its a big problem in wyoming doing the summer. you might ask why i need almost 400watts of 2meter power as you will see below from my setup, i need this much power because i travel northen wyoming and most repeaters up here are about 100 miles apart from each other. is there anything i can do to keep the lightning from getting from the antenna to the amplifier i'm going to be running. my setup i'm looking at is the following:
West Mountian Radio Rigrunner 4005 (i have to have this because i share the company truck and i work 5 on,5 off, company is installing this for free if i pay for the part)
Kenwood TM-D710A
Green Light Labs GPS-710
Mirage B-5018-G Amplifier
Mirage RC-2 Remote Control
45 feet of LMR-400FR coax, 25 feet of coax going from antenna to under the slepper when the amplifier will be and then 20 feet from amplifier to the radio
Diamond NR7900A


73s
Ron Swart

[W9GAS Gary]

Mobile Operating Premier website is www.K0BG.com. Check out the information concerning lightning. In most cases since you are on rubber tires, it is not a big issue.....in most cases. The owner of that website has been struck by lightning while mobile. The most important thing you can do is have your antenna DC grounded to the chassis. No mag mount antenna will do that. Most mobile HF antennas are DC grounded to the frame. Since radio waves are not DC, there is no loss of signal as half your antenna is the frame and body metal. There are static suppressors for mobile antenna systems. One is to use small ball (sphere) on the antenna tip to suppress the formation of static electricity buildup. Another way shown on that website is a static bleeder made from a piece of stranded electric cable. I use a piece of 10 ga wire stripped back about 1 1/2 inches and the strands "splayed" out to bleed the static build up. Also, your tires have additives in the rubber to bleed static charge build up. Perhaps the best protection is to remove the coax from the amplifier or radio when storm conditions are close. I have operated VHF mobile for 13 years. I do not do as I say regarding disconnecting. If lightning zaps my VHF radio, I will get another one. However, in the case of the HF mobile system I run, I have on occasion disconnected the antenna from the radio. Cannot do much about the HF antenna. It is DC grounded through the matching inductor coil.