Lightning protection

Lightning can take many paths from the clouds to ground and also from the top of the tower to ground. There are four upper guy wires, four lower guy wires and the tower itself. Each one has slightly different electrical properties. Protection from lightning requires reducing the differences. To do this we need to 'bond' all five bottom connections together. In our system there are copper wires that go undergroundfrom each of the guy wire bottoms to a central point next to the tower, this is also connected to the tower. We drove a 10 ft grounding rod down next to the central piling. All ground wires from the guys and the tower connect to this and also to a piece of rebar that extends from the rebar cage in the piling. Thus we ground through the rod and the piling. Concrete is not an electrical insulator!

To date we have no record of strikes. We have many tall communication towers in the vicinity and a hill to the east that is taller than our tower so this may not be surprising.

On last point the Outback equipment comes with lightning arrestors built in.