Wally was always a cautious man. Some say paranoid, but Wally preferred the term “electromagnetically responsible.” After a close call involving static discharge and a half-melted SWR meter, he vowed never again.
It started with a single ground rod. Then came two more “just in case.” Then a ground grid, imported from a decommissioned Navy radar station. Before long, Wally had installed a copper mesh under his entire shack floor and was grounding everything with military precision: the radio, the tuner, the mic stand, the ceiling fan, the water cooler, and—after a misunderstanding—the neighbor’s garden gnome.
Every night, just before bed, Wally would walk the perimeter with a voltmeter and a mug of decaf, whispering softly to his grounding rods like they were old friends. “Holding steady at 0.3 ohms. Good job, boys.”
The Alabama Day Net operators grew concerned after Wally stopped transmitting altogether.
“I think his signal’s trapped underground,” one said.
Another claimed, “He’s running negative SWR now. The wave reflects before he keys the mic.”
One morning, a freak lightning storm hit the neighborhood. Trees exploded. Transformers hummed. A bolt zeroed in on Wally’s triple-bonded tower like a guided missile.
The strike hit. And… nothing.
Inside, Wally sipped his coffee. His lights flickered—just once. A toaster popped up two minutes early, but otherwise, not a scratch.
Wally stood, nodded at his copper pipe collection, and muttered,
“Told you: redundant grounding.”
Back on the net, someone keyed up:
“Anyone heard from Wally lately?”
A reply came, faint and ghostly:
“He’s gone full Faraday. We may never reach him again.”
