HAM… radio station

Long painful story short. A few months ago I took a ‘Huge’ lighting strike to my Amateur Radio antennas and to my radio shack electric service line.
Lighting totally destroyed my 2 meter, 70 CM and HF antennas as well as 3 – 75 foot runs of Belden 9913 coax cable. In the radio shack this strike destroyed a HF antenna tuner, FTdx1200 HF radio, Signal Link (Digital interface unit) a IC-2730A VHF/UHF duel band radio and a FT-2980 VHF radio.

If this wasn’t enough lighting entered my radio shack via the electric service line taking out the breaker box, radio power supply, security cameras, computer and monitor as well as a 40 inch TV and my internet router, WiFi transceiver and antenna dish. Home owners insurance only covered a bout 20% of the total replacement cost.
Sad smile… National Weather Service said “A typical lightning flash is about 300 million Volts and about 30,000 Amps, that’s about 9,000,000,000,000 watts’, that would power a lot, a lot of 100 watt light bulbs.

Over 3 months of time, effort and money I’m fully back on the air. OK I’m finished whining ‘for’ now.
I have 2 new Diamond X-300A (VHF/UHF) duel band antennas and a new OCF (Off Center Fed) Windom style dipole HF antenna mounted on a 43 foot hing over antenna pole with an additional 8 foot copper clad ground rod and copper ground cable, with a 3 new Belden 9913 coax cables installed.

Almost every thing in the shack is new.
Radios I selected are, FT-2980 VHF, IC-2730A duel band radios. I selected the FT-2980 because it is built like a M1 Tank and does 80 watts out of the box, a really great base or mobile radio.
I replaced the dead FTdx1200 with Yaesu’s FT-710. It has a very small foot print, less than 10 inch width/depth and only about 3 inches high it has an auto-antenna tuner built in and receives/transmits every bit as good as the FTdx1200 maybe even better.

Happy Holiday season