Repair-It

Question: How can I prevent loss from a lightning strike? To what extent can I reduce the likelihood and consequence of a strike? How concerned should I be?

Background: Chimney-mounted TV antenna. Lots of surrounding, taller trees. Antenna is currently ungrounded as is the coax feeding the TV tuner in my HTPC.

Hypothesis: Lightning strike mitigation is broken into two categories: decreasing the likelihood of a strike, and decreasing loss when a strike occurs. Adding a ground path of any reasonable gauge (i.e. 16 gauge) will dissipate any static charge build up and reduce the likelihood of a strike. But to truly reduce the probability of loss from a direct strike, you'd need tremendous amounts of conductor from the antenna direct to a ground stake (or several). By "tremendous amounts" I mean very thick gauge straps, approximating 0000 gauge or bigger. But maybe thinner gauge straps still meaningfully decrease the chance of loss from a direct strike.

In the end, my current claim is that just stick to static discharge (small gauge, can even be connected to the coax), because it is impractical to install enough conductor to truly give the lightning a 100% path to ground and not set fire to something in the house. In other words, direct strikes are highly probable of causing significant loss no matter what you do. So the mitigation should center around adequate strike prevention instead.

Research: None conducted as of yet.

Just don't cut those trees down near your house. They are taller than the antennae and are grounded.

I cut down like 20 trees directly surrounding my house since this post. I assume everything will be fine forever.

I also looked into this and came up with nothing worth trying. You could always mount your antenna on something other than your house, or see if you could get an attic mount to work. I wonder if this was a huge problem back when everyone had a massive TV antenna on the roof.