"Gray Shockley" wrote in message
.com...
On Mon, 4 Oct 2004 21:19:00 -0500, Michael Lawson wrote
(in article ):

I have a confession to make; I've always wanted an outdoor
antenna, but I was never either allowed to (when I was a kid)
or wasn't pratical do run one. Well, I now have the ability
to run one outside, but there are some questions I have about
some of the gagetry that is available these days.



Why not start out easy?

Grab one of the ten dollar RadioShack 66 footers - either the one
with
the insulators and lead (bell wire) or only the twisted copper.

The "random length" is really, pretty much, the baseline against
which
all the others are measured but it's also just a darn good antenna,
in
and of itself.

Actually, I was using that inside the house (just trimmed down to
20 ft or so). I stopped by Rat Shack to pick another one up, but
they were out. (The sales guy claimed that they don't stock it
much any more since it's seldom asked for. Probably if the store
wants it, they have to actually sell it every once in a while for
their
computer to start ordering more.) So, I dropped by Home Depot
and got 100 ft. of 14 ga. stranded copper wire and ran about
40-50 ft of it outside for the time being.

As far as lightning protection goes, the best protection is the
lead-in
out the window and screwed onto a ground rod (or a coax connector
that
is melded into the ground rod if you're usin' coax).

Here, in Central Mississippi, we have very violent storms and it's a
bad idea to keep an antenna connected for several months a year. I
use(d) a ceramic based knife switch (a BIG one) for normal use and
threw te thing out the window when the air had "that feeling".

Ouch. For a change, this year in Cincy has been pretty darn
tame for storms, but yeah, I can see doing that during the
summer. By the time I'd go inside during the summer, a lot
of the programs beamed at NA are already getting ready to
sign off anyway.

--Mike L.