I'm just going to throw this in there because of many things this seems to bring up, Hilarious or not, it can be serious enough to require attention, that many either didn't know about, or forgot, or had just a plain false memory somewhere...this is a LEGACY post, dealing with a protection problem many mis-interpret.
It
Deals with this series of posts.. mostly dealing with a radio and conversions but it touches on the issue with the "Front End" protection.
NOT a lot of people were aware of to look into getting fixed nor even aware of TSB's and free warranty work for those that owned a model that was not pre-production corrected...
I've seen a few "dead RX" radios come across my desk enough to know that the "urban Myth" this seems to be has some basis of fact.
Not sure if many out here even remember the days when you put your station to bed, it meant also taking out the coax and putting it in a glass jar. Many CB'ers used LONG runs of coax to get to the antenna but never made a breakpoint to even disconnect from the inside, or outside the home - they just kept it connected.
Well that is their choice and some survive to this day, but others weren't so fortunate and lost either the home or the radio to the "Static" build up you can get on dry windy days as the wind blows by and strums the antenna into generating a considerable poke of static electricity - this can also damage the front end of that radio.
Thunderstorms passing close but not within a "watch" or "Warn" area - many just disconnected the coax to prevent the radio from getting damaged or worse, having the radio and its' power supply connected along with the antenna - many felt the danger of lightning and power surges from it -warranted concerns - since it may have been too dangerous to take down the antenna in the storm - wait it out and pray was their norm.
To this day, Uniden and Cobra still make radios with Positive and Negative ground ignition polarity protection wiring and HI-POT static bleed down resistors for this reason. You can travel along, drive thru regions of differing air masses and hear this effect and if you have a simple basic antenna like a Firestik or Francis or even the 102" whip - they are isolated at the feed point from each conductor - meaning the shield goes to ground, the whip in the air - nothing in-between - sort of thing.
Realize the fact that as you travel you're moving a vehicle thru air, and if that air is dry generates static charges or are around a lot of electrical noise - those noises - their fields - can get inducted/induced into the antenna thru the coax and into the radio - posing a possible hazard to you if you are not careful.
Same applies to amps being used in these conditions of using no static suppression on the output of the amp or antenna jack at the radio - the RF spike can enter into and damage the radio in both RF final and Front End of the receiver. RF burns to someone's lips used to be considered a compliment to someone's ability to design a system to produce that kind of RF power - Popcorn Anyone?
So those "quench diodes" were used to rectify and the excessive currents - since a simple Pin diode can get "perforated" enough times by these excessive discharges to quit working - the simple back-to-back diode orientation protects the PIN and Front end - even from high mis-matched SWR problems a careless operator can create.
So there were MANY reasons for those that owned radios with the missing pieces of the puzzle to take to the notion of disconnecting the coax from the radio if they were not using it for some time - even if only for several hours waiting to storms to pass. The chances of getting struck by lightning were still the paramount problem, but even gentle static discharge, EMP from the closer lightning strikes and high-winds casing the blowing static - can do damage to the radios receiver.
The proof is in the TSB's Cobra sent out - read the thread to find it.
UL and CPSC - requiring DC grounded antennas along with Station Grounding procedures for Base station use - is another.
Ok - I said it...My history...