For best safety and peace of mind, disconnect EVERYTHING---antenna, power cords AND ground wires.  In other words, isolate your components completely.  Reason?  A nearby ground strike can feed energy back through your ground wires, and a strike on the power lines can send a surge through your house wiring.  Here in west central New Mexico, we have thunder storms almost daily from mid July to late August, and intermittent storms until October or even later.  I keep an eye on the weather forecasts.  Plus, when I hear the faintest mutterings of distant thunder or see a lightning bolt in the far distance, even though I have blue skies overhead, EVERYTHING gets disconnected.  Don't delay when you have a storm approaching or activity in your area.  Say 73 to your contact and unplug.  Same with your computer(s), then avoid wired phones, sinks, showers, and so on.  It only takes one whack and you're a casualty or have fried gear.  73s

I used a HW101 for years as a young (and very poor) Ham in the Army.  One critical thing I learned early on was to take off the top every couple of weeks and tighten the multitude of screws that hold each circuit board in place.  As the rig heats and cools with each cycle of use, these blasted screws loosen and cause weird problems with frequency drift, power flucuations, etc.  So, before any other checks and repairs, tighten all those screws first. It will make an amazing difference.  
Regards,  WB7DCV

My current 75' Rohn 25G is set in cement (no insulators) and guyed at 40 feet and again at 70 feet.  In my opinion, the guys are critical!  I use 3/8 cable and insulate about three feet out from the tower and again at about 20 feet out.  Each leg of the tower at the base has a flat one inch braid about six feet long attached and each is connected to two eight foot ground stakes.  Each guy wire is also grounded to an eight foot stake at the lower end.  I live in the deserts of western New Mexico and 90-100 mph winds during storm fronts are not uncommon.  My current installation has been up since 1987 and has survived many such wind gusts complicated by occasional heavy icing in winter.  For lightning protection, I run all feedlines and rotor cables INSIDE the tower and cross back and forth every 10 to 15 feet due to the theory that lightning doesn't like bends/corners and will (should) shunt to a tower leg at that point.  Where the bundled wires exit the tower I have "blind" coils of #12 wire, about six turns with the upper end open and the lower attached to a tower leg.  Again, this is on the theory that the lightning bolt "sees" the coil as a high resistance and shunts to the tower leg rather than traveling on through the wires/cables.  I use the same blind coil arrangement outside the shack where the end of the coil closest to the house is grounded and the far end is open.  I'm no lightning expert but all this does make me feel better and, so far, no lightning damage.  And, sorry to be so long winded but will repeat---proper guying is critical as is the largest practical cement base pour!
Regards,  WB7DCV  

I'm a retired Army guy and lived in government quarters on various Army posts for years.  Same problem you have plus restrictions on making any real modifications to "government property."  My standard "dodge" was to install a Radio Shack type telescoping mast over a sturdy length of pipe driven into the lawn.  I used a hefty screw clamp to fasten the mast to the roof edge or eaves, then went up from there another 20 to 30 feet and guyed the heck out of each ten feet above the roof edge or peak.  I rotated multiband HF dipoles and many full size quads and delta loops from those masts for a lot of years and had minimal problems.  The whole trick is the guys, use a minimum of three spaced 120 degrees and attached to solid points such as fence posts, deep ground stakes, etc.  This may not be a DX King's dream but I sure worked a lot of DX over the years.  
Best regards and have fun,  WB7DCV

I spent several hours in Google and other search engines.  A lot of hits doesn't always mean you'll find your specific answers.  However, many thanks for the reply.  

Reason this pvc "spoke" parabola was so neat was the way it automatically bowed the pipes into a fairly accurate parabola with adjustable focus and even offset feed if you wanted to play with the length of the fishing lines connecting the tips of the spokes to the center "slider."  I want to build another but this time for focusing the sun.  Natural gas prices have gone out of sight here in NM and I've gone heavily into solar for winter heat.  By the way, electricity is now cheaper in my area than gas.  First time I can ever recall that happening.  

Again, thanks to all.  WB7DCV

Guys, In the 70s, I build a 12 foot diameter dish using a plywood circle, pvc pipe "spokes," fishing line, and screen wire.  I would like to duplicate this effort today and can't find the article which was, I believe, in QST, 73, or an ARRL Antenna Manual of the mid 70s. I've searched my library and the net with no success.  Can anyone help?  Thanks,  Laurence.  

I have a 70 foot tower with a rotor and yagi at the top.  If/when I have to repair or replace the rotor, it is NOT going back up there!  Instead, I'm going to mount it the rotor inside the tower about the six from the ground.  The mast will go from there on up inside the tower and out the top.  I wish I'd done this when I first erected the tower.  I plan to use a thrust bearing just above the rotor and another just to keep the mast centered at the tower apex.  Rotar repairs would then be simple and, in case of a failure, I could armstrong the antenna in the interim.

Regards

You mentioned that you previously had a vertical mounted on a chain link fence....?  I've had real good luck with this sort of mounting in the past.  My best was two verticals spaced about 17 or 18 feet apart (two of the metal fence posts) and used as a phased array.  Anyway, the fence made a good starter ground and I drove in ground rods about four feet each side of each vertical and clamped the tops of the ground rods to the woven fence material and also wired to the metal fence posts where each vertical was mounted.  I ran radials, as many as I could and in any direction I could regardless of length.  I took care of the rf exposure and shock hazard by shielding everything with various diameters of PVC pipe.  You can slit or slot the larger diameters to fit around almost any type of base mounting and the antennas far above the reach of anyone not using a ladder.  Good luck.  

I have a 70 foot Rohn 25 tower and I bought the work platform at the same time as the tower (35 years ago).  I wouldn't be without it.  I've posted before on this site about the Rohn platform.  ANYTIME I go up my tower, I lay the platform on the ground at the tower base and link it to my climbiing belt with a long cord.  Then, if what I initially thought would be a quick "up and down" turns into a longer job, I pull up the platform and snap it into place.  Unless you've used a platform, you can't believe how much easier they make tower work.  You stand flat without strain on your legs and feet and you have much more upper body strength available if you have to use some muscle.  I'll soon be 71 so I'm grateful for anything that eases the strain when I'm up the tower. It was money well spent!  73s  Laurence

I remember the woodpecker well.  I also suspect the Russians were monitoring ham's comments to each other as an easy way to get signal reports.  I was stationed at an Army base in Utah at the time and some other hams and I tried playing games with the woodpecker.  We would have a QSO underway, when the woodpecker came up, one or another of us would make a comment about the woodpecker filters (fictitious) we'd designed, how good they were, and the interfering signals no longer bothered us.  Wow!  Almost instant response as the woodpecker would zero on us, linger,  and even seem to turn up the power. We could barely hear each other through the noise but we would carry on for a bit as though the signal wasn't there and then casually sign off.  We did this a number of times and always got a real jamming, hence my belief they were monitoring.    

What is it you're wanting to do?  There are a lot of practical methods of providing lightning protection without buying all sorts of "fancy stuff."  I had a QTH on a mountain (hill) top in NW Arkansas for years.  I threaded all cables down inside my 70' Rohn tower and looped from side to side every 10 feet.  I also used "blind" coils, a wrap of ten or so turns of heavy aluminum wire wrapped around the bundled coax and rotor cables with the upper end of the coil bonded to a tower leg and the rest of the coil extending along the wires it was wrapped around in the direction of the shack.  I also blind coiled where the cables exited the tower and additionally "broke" the coaxes with barrel connectors and grounded them.  Ditto again where the cables entered the shack and also connected to two ground rods at that point.  The tower was grounded at each of its three legs to six ground stakes and a 400' chain link fence.  All six guys were also grounded to double stakes and the fence where close enough.  Anway, after all that, my family and I used to stand on our porch during a storm to watch lightning hit the tower.  I kid you not.  I took four to five hits every year between approximately March and November with no damage to tower, antennas, or house.  The rigs were always disconnected anytime I wasn't on the air.  Often, when a strike was imminent, the top of the tower would have a vivid blue glow that was quite beautiful.  That same tower (and methods) are now up here in NM.  By the way, a rule of thumb I've heard is that a grounded tower like this protects a circular area with a diameter approximately three times the tower's height.  I don't know if that's so or not but my homes haven't yet (knock on wood) been hit and no strikes so far here in NM.  I guess nothing will totally protect one from a direct "super bolt" hit but the methods I've used sure saved my bacon from smaller strikes.  73s Laurence  

Man!  If I had a 3,000 square foot metal roof, I would IMMEDIATELY have some verticals mounted on it!  What a great ground plane.  73s Laurence

Heath kits are also known for loose screws as they heat and cool during use.  Used to be a routine thing to go through my Heath ham gear ever so often and snug up all the multitude of screws holding various circuit boards, tube sockets, multiple connector and ground lugs, etc.  Used to cure all sorts of erratic behavior and hum problems and was the first thing I did before further trouble shooting.  73s, Laurence

While in the US Army and assigned as an advisor in a primative part of Africa circa 1980, we needed to splice a LOT of coax of difference sizes.  The African troops had merely twisted the center conductors and braids together as you might do for a quick and dirty lamp cord splice.  Needless to say, darned little RF went through these.  Lacking connectors and so on, we came up with a way to do in-line coax splices.  We cut the outer insulation and removed it an inch or so back, then pushed the braid back as far as possible.  Then we cut about a quarter inch off the center conductor and stripped it back for another quarter to three-eights inch.  We hooked and soldered the center conductors and slit black plastic tape to the right width to wrap around this splice and build it back up to the original diameter of the center conductor.  Follwing that, pushed the braids back over the splice, kept one braid down snug and slid the other braid over it. soldered that, wrapped it with tape, and voila!, were back to something that would pass RF without too much of an impedance "bump."  I know it's crude but any port in a storm, necessity is the mother of invention, and all that.  Anyway, it worked.  I've since used this technique a time or two when I needed to work through a tight space.    

I've had my three element SteppIR up on a 70' Rohn tower for the past two plus years.  Absolutely no problems.  It just works and works well.  I do a lot of band hopping so the auto tuner aspect of the antenna gives it lots of exercise; again no problems.  My QTH is in west central New Mexico about 25 miles south of Albuquerque in the high desert, elevation just over 5,000 feet.  Hence, all extremes of weather and lots of high winds especially in the spring and fall. Still no problems; it just rides them out and ditto with the ice and snow.  Bottom line:  Antenna is super and money well spent.  
73s  Laurence