#1 Mistake Hams Make During Thunderstorms—Fix It Before It's Too Late
Every summer, the forums light up with horror stories: radios fried, shacks scorched, and operators baffled. And yet, many hams still follow outdated or outright ineffective practices when it comes to lightning protection.
Let’s bust the biggest myth first: Disconnecting your coax and sticking it in a glass jar will not save your gear. In fact, it could be dangerously misleading.
Here’s what every operator should be doing instead:
Ground Your Antennas—The Right Way
The only real defense against lightning isn’t disconnection. It’s low-impedance grounding. That means physically bonding your antenna system to the earth using:
- Copper ground rods (ideally 2 meters or more)
- Wide copper strap or heavy gauge copper wire (no thin wire!)
- Short, straight runs to minimize inductive impedance
And don’t think a stainless steel (RVS) rod will do. Stainless may survive the weather, but it’s a poor conductor compared to copper. For lightning protection, you need conductivity first, corrosion resistance second.
RF Ground Is Not Lightning Ground
This point cannot be overstated: RF ground and lightning protection are not the same thing. Your RF ground may be optimized for return currents and matching—but it’s not designed to dissipate the massive energy from a lightning strike.
A real lightning ground must have extremely low resistance to the earth and be capable of withstanding impulse currents in the tens of kiloamperes. Think of it more like your household electrical ground: it’s there to save lives, not optimize signal quality.
What About DC-Open Antennas?
Many common antennas—like center-fed dipoles and fan dipoles—are DC-open at the feedpoint. These do not provide a discharge path for static buildup or nearby lightning discharges.
That’s why we recommend using bleeder resistors, as explained in our dedicated article:
DC-Grounded vs Open Antennas – What Every Ham Should Know
A bleeder helps to safely discharge static buildup and minimize the risk of differential arcing across your gear—even if lightning doesn’t strike directly.
So What Should You Do?
- Install a dedicated safety ground with real copper rods.
- Use gas discharge tubes or lightning arrestors only as a second line of defense.
- Bond all metal parts of your station together, including the mast, coax shield, and station ground.
- Disconnecting? Fine—but ground the disconnected coax properly with a coax switch or grounding bar. Not a jar.
Bottom Line
Lightning protection isn’t about folklore or rituals—it’s about physics. High current doesn’t care about superstition. If your grounding system can’t handle it, your station is a sitting duck.
Ground right. Sleep better.
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Written by Joeri Van Dooren, ON6URE – RF, electronics and software engineer, complex platform and antenna designer. Founder of RF.Guru. An expert in active and passive antennas, high-power RF transformers, and custom RF solutions, he has also engineered telecom and broadcast hardware, including set-top boxes, transcoders, and E1/T1 switchboards. His expertise spans high-power RF, embedded systems, digital signal processing, and complex software platforms, driving innovation in both amateur and professional communications industries.