Technical Topics > Propagation

Is my radio dead though?

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i_hear_you:

--- Quote from: Pigmeat on July 05, 2019, 2244 UTC ---The front end of my good ol' Sangean 404 went last weekend due to tornado spawning storms kicking out some serious lightning. The whip was retracted and it wasn't near wires leading outside.

--- End quote ---

This post just ruined my day. 

I was listening on an old Panasonic in my house last month and heard some lightning static crashes that peaked meter a couple times before I powered down and stowed the whip.  I figured if powered down and stowed I'd be fine.  Now I'm going to test my radios so I can stop freaking out about it.

Josh:
Also unplug them from ac power if they use ac power supplies when not in use. The damage can travel via the ac line and zap various sensitive inners.

i_hear_you:
Kage, good to hear nothing fried.

Pigmeat, was your radio powered up during the storm, or can these things really take damage indoors, away from external conductors?

Josh, I keep everything unplugged when not in use. There's also a bunch of audio gear involved that I'm not interested in replacing.

But i have to know...should i start stowing my radios in literal faraday cages while not in use? I'm really paranoid now.

Josh:
Lol there's two main trains of thought;

One is ground everything, bond everything, disconnect everything.

The other is the opposite, ground nothing, disconnect nothing.

I ground things as well as I can because I want a quieter rf environment. Someone I know who is a trusted ee grounds nothing, disconnects nothing, and has yet to lose anything and he has thousands of dollas of gear attached to full size hf wires and beams atop tall towers. That being said, he uses some large pointy ended shotgun bore cleaning brush thingys bonded to the towers at or near the top to bleed away any nearfield streamers in the air. No streamers = no lightning strike.

An uncle who was a HAM for decades and an ee who did quality control on nuclear submarine and icbm guidance systems was of the tall tower, full size hf wires, large v/uhf verticals, ground everything mindset. He lost thousands of dollas worth of HAM gear to lightning on several different occasions.

I'm leaning towards the large shotgun bore streamer thingy for tall towers and ground everything to eliminate ground loops and keep rf noise down

BoomboxDX:

--- Quote from: i_hear_you on July 14, 2019, 0048 UTC ---Kage, good to hear nothing fried.

Pigmeat, was your radio powered up during the storm, or can these things really take damage indoors, away from external conductors?

Josh, I keep everything unplugged when not in use. There's also a bunch of audio gear involved that I'm not interested in replacing.

But i have to know...should i start stowing my radios in literal faraday cages while not in use? I'm really paranoid now.

--- End quote ---

As for portables, if they have internal diode protection, and you don't have it connected to an external wire antenna, chances are you have little to worry about.

I don't live in T-storm country -- we maybe get one a year, if that -- but none of my portables has fried, even when I had a 100 ft wire (which I grounded when it wasn't in use). Perhaps I've been lucky. Perhaps Pigmeat's 404 had a different fault -- microprocessors can wig sometimes, and some radios do not have internal diode protection, although Sangeans built since the early 1990's generally do (the 818 and 818CS being notable exceptions). I don't know about the 404 -- it's a recent design, I think (2000's era?), so it should have internal protection. I know my ATS505 (RS 200629) does.

EDIT TO ADD:
I just found a Service Manual of the ATS-404 online. It has no internal diode protection whatsoever, at least none that I can see from the schematic. No protection either for the FM Front End chip, or the RF amp for the SW/MW RF amp FET. That might be part of the problem with Pigmeat's 404, unfortunately.

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