Can you protect your Ham Radio gear against a direct hit (direct lightning strike)?
A lightning strike can produce as much as 1.2 gigawatts of power. A gigawatt is a unit used to measure electrical power, and one gigawatt is equal to one billion watts. Lightning strikes can be incredibly powerful and fast, with each strike containing roughly one billion joules of energy. This is enough energy to boil the water in 3,000 kitchen kettles. Lightning strikes travel at the speed of light, nearly 300,000 kilometers per hour. They can be up to 150 times more powerful than an industrial shock, and can even exceed the power of a nuclear reactor.
If a lightning bolt could be harvested, it could power as many as 3.4 million homes for a year. A big bolt could power a small town of around 50 houses for a day.
The odds of a direct lightning strike are a little strange. The odds that your home will be struck by lightning is 1/200. However 99% of homes in the US. have never been struck by lightning.
So, we can see that a direct hit would be catastrophic. But what if the strike isn’t direct, but nearby?
We can protect our gear from a strike that occurs nearby, or at least attempt to. A PolyPhaser is a coaxial radio frequency surge protector. It is usually installed in a box outside where your antenna feeds come into your shack. The box has a ground so that all that energy can easily get to ground, rather taking the route to your equipment. The purpose of the PolyPhaser is to protect sensitive equipment in radio and antenna installations, especially when some or all of the equipment is outdoors. The PolyPhaser is designed to pass the desired frequency while suppressing DC surge. PolyPhaser can protect against power surges caused by lightning. It can also protect against electrical changes related to electromagnetic pulse (EMP) or high-altitude EMP (HEMP). The PolyPhaser allows antennas to be permanently connected to radios without worrying (too much) about lightning damage. I’m not sure we can ever really “not worry”. In my opinion it is safer to disconnect your antennas when the equipment is not in use.
So there you go, the PolyPhaser provides a reasonable amount of security against lightning strikes. For the most part. 73