Poor Man's Lightning Arrestor

If you live in a place where lightning is a problem, then protecting your equipment is a must. You would also need a lightning rod at the highest point near your house.  Maybe this is your house or it could be a windmill or some other structure.  But either way, you would need a metal pipe or rod at the highest point and pretty big wire going straight to a ground pipe.  But even with a lightning rod, if lighting strikes on your property, then a huge static charge would still be in the local area.  This could travel through your shortwave antena wire or power cable from your windmill and fry your expensive circuits.

The trick with lightning is that it hates to change directions.  If it is traveling along a conductor to ground and the conductor changes direction, then lightning will want to jump to the next nearest conductor to ground.  In the below picture, the copper power wire (it is insulated) from a windmill is wrapped around a metal pipe that is driven into the ground.  The wire is wrapped several times and then loops up and back down again before continuing to the charge controller.  It is just clamped to the pipe with a zip tie. Lightning will jump through the power wire's insulator and to the copper/steel pipe and go straight to ground.

Richard