Shocking Development

This weekend Marv KK4DKT and I went out for portable ops at a local park. The weather was nasty. There was very light rain and the wind was kicking up. Marv setup his rig and the Buddipole. I put up a crappie pole and was setting up a 28 foot end fed wire. To my surprise I was getting shocks from the end of the wire. It was just a wire from the tip of the crappie pole to my hand. I could see one shock but it would repeat. Also Marv came over and he got shocked too. In fact we could hear it in his rig. So I decided that it was not a good plan to hookup this charged wire to my new KX3 rig. Marv's Buddipole was not tuning well either. I think it had to do with the very wet ground.  There was some chance we just entered the Twilight Zone so we left. Hi Hi.

I shared this with Bob WB4BLX and did some research and found a YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bDPWGUfwlY and a January 2011 QST article about precipitation static. It can happen with snow or rain. It is hard for me to think that water or snow can be charged but it seems to be the case.

73s

Greg N4KGL