[BC] 30/30 Lightning safety rule.

[Dana Puopolo]

I took a pocket transistor AM radio. removed the local oscillator/mixer
transistor and hooked the RF amp right to the IF amplifier. After peaking
things up, I had a nifty 455 kHz receiver that woirked great as a lightning
detector.

I took one of these and hooked a comparitor/intergrator to it's earphone jack.
The comparitor drove a circuit that turned on and load switched their
generator, The volume control of the radio set the trip point 
No more lightning induced outages there any more (they used to go off
frequently due to their single phase power and mountaintop location; once we
blew rectifier stacks twice in one evening.

-D


------ Original Message ------
Received: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 01:05:42 PM EDT
From: Mike McCarthy <Towers at mre.com>
To: "Broadcasters' Mailing List" <broadcast at radiolists.net>
Subject: Re: [BC] 30/30 Lightning safety rule.

I would agree with the concept, but disagree in practice.  You can hear 
crashes several hundred miles away as well as be probably misled about 
where the activity is located.  We'd never get any work done...

MM

At 08:45 AM 7/23/2006 -0400, WFIFeng at aol.com wrote
>In a message dated 07/22/2006 8:06:07 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
>Towers at mre.com writes:
>
> > As one who has been on a tower as a fast approaching storm struck, I
> >  realize it hard to visually watch the skies and react accordingly when 
> the
> >  storm sneaks up on the site.  Hence the need to monitor the WX if 
> there is
> >  a risk for storm activity.
>
>Tuned to a weak or absent signal at the low-end of the band, a pocket
>transistor AM radio works very well as a "quick & dirty" storm detector. 
>You can hear
>the static crashes well in advance of the storm's arrival.
>
>Willie...
>_______________________________________________
>
>Do you have a BDR? http://www.oldradio.com/bdr.htm

_______________________________________________

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