Brownouts, shorts, explosions and the unix pc.

[David B. Thomas]

gil at limbic.ssdl.com (Gil Kloepfer Jr.) writes:

>The best protection from lightning is unplugging your machine from
>the power **AND** phone lines.

My friend Mark (no credentials at all) reports that tying your cords
in knots actually helps protect the equipment against lightning.
He said he sustained an actual hit to his power lines, and the
cord caught fire, but the equipment, which was plugged in, was
unharmed.

My first thought was to balk....but consider this:

The knots form inductors which have a fairly large reactance
at rf.  Lightning has lots of rf energy (switch on a radio
during a thunderstorm to prove this!).

So... a knot looks to lightning like an inductor with non-
negligible inductance, and it will absorb some of the energy
before the equipment gets any.

To be honest, I haven't taken any of this seriously enough
to have tied all my cords in knots yet, but hey --- it's
probably worth a try.  I'd trust it no less than a box
that costs $1000 and says "lightning eliminator" on it! :-)

					little david
-- 
In electronics, no one thinks you're strange if you blow your pal.