Seat belts, covid masks, surge suppressors... safety glasses, ear plugs... vaccines, vitamins, exercise... Religion, politics, health insurance, lottery... Lots of things have believers.
I know in the early days of telephone, people were getting killed by talking on the phone during thunderstorms. So the first surge suppressors were invented. They were called protectors. And the phone companies all started publishing a notice in the phone book about not talking on the phone during storms. My first telco job, first job task, first morning on the job, was to clean the carbon blocks on protectors after a thunderstorm rolled through Mt. Vernon, Oregon the night before. The surges would blast chunks of graphite off one side of the air gap and contaminate the air gap noising up the phone line. You would take them out, wipe the two halves on your jeans and put them back together. The central office protectors almost never got hit, but the ones at the house did. This is somewhat analogous to top of tower and bottom of tower. From: Josh Luthman Sent: Monday, August 31, 2020 9:19 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Surge cards, what should I expect? It would be nice of us users to report damage done vs installed method. Maybe set up a form if you're feeling frisky :) Josh Luthman Office: 937-552-2340 Direct: 937-552-2343 1100 Wayne St Suite 1337 Troy, OH 45373 On Mon, Aug 31, 2020 at 11:12 AM <[email protected]> wrote: I don’t have data. Hard to replicate strikes and do A/B tests. Some folks believe surge suppressors are simply snake oil. I can’t find my folder of all the photos sent to me over the years where the surge suppressor is nothing but a charred black crisp but the radio and the customers equipment were OK. Direct strikes kills everything including your hot water heater and your microwave. From: Josh Luthman Sent: Monday, August 31, 2020 9:02 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Surge cards, what should I expect? The Tik was definitely not damaged. Did the surge suppressors protect it? I don't know, I guess that's part of my question here. Never seen a surge suppressor blown I don't think. Never seen one charred. I have had to swap them out in a few cases to fix ethernet problems. >Some folks have surge suppressors at the top, some at the bottom, some at top and bottom. Do you have any data on which is best? Josh Luthman Office: 937-552-2340 Direct: 937-552-2343 1100 Wayne St Suite 1337 Troy, OH 45373 On Mon, Aug 31, 2020 at 10:49 AM <[email protected]> wrote: OK, but did the surge suppressors protect the Tik? Nearby strikes induce hundreds to thousands of volts per meter in all conductors. Most of the stories I hear is that the surge suppressor is blown to bits but the devices it is connected to are OK. But the closer the strike, the more damage. Some folks have surge suppressors at the top, some at the bottom, some at top and bottom. From: Josh Luthman Sent: Monday, August 31, 2020 8:35 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Surge cards, what should I expect? The Tik is grounded to the bus bar. The surge cards use the WBMFG metal boxes which ground to the same ground, but a different bus bar. Josh Luthman Office: 937-552-2340 Direct: 937-552-2343 1100 Wayne St Suite 1337 Troy, OH 45373 On Mon, Aug 31, 2020 at 10:30 AM <[email protected]> wrote: And was the Tik connected to the surge suppressors? From: Josh Luthman Sent: Monday, August 31, 2020 8:21 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Surge cards, what should I expect? Surge cards are only inside the building. We lost 0 ethernet ports on the Tik. Josh Luthman Office: 937-552-2340 Direct: 937-552-2343 1100 Wayne St Suite 1337 Troy, OH 45373 On Mon, Aug 31, 2020 at 9:59 AM Ken Hohhof <[email protected]> wrote: We’ve gone to the “Cat6” (gas tube) versions but I don’t think that has any bearing on your question, if anything they may offer less protection, but better Ethernet data integrity. Are you putting these at both ends of the cable, or only at the switch or router end? I never assume they protect the radios, unless the surge is coming from the network side, e.g. a power line surge. They protect the network equipment like switch, router or POE. If the surge is coming from the radio end, my personal opinion is a surge protector may actually increase the chance of radio damage by giving the surge a path to ground via the cable. But let’s face it, if the tower take a hit, you may lose equipment no matter what you do for grounding or surge protection. Best bet may be fiber for data and a direct power cable with a DC surge protector right at the radio. Strange that the Powerbridge was the only survivor, as you say, it’s not exactly a high end piece of equipment, basically a Rocket PCB built into a panel antenna. But it might be interesting to do a failure analysis on the stuff that died. Most of the time I find it’s the power supply that got fried, the radio won’t even power up. I looked at a Transtector product once that had fuses in the protection modules, that would seem to mean you always have to replace the modules after a surge, but maybe the fuse opening up is better for the radio. I suspect you just had a bad day. It happens despite best efforts. From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Josh Luthman Sent: Monday, August 31, 2020 8:27 AM To: AFMUG <[email protected]> Subject: [AFMUG] Surge cards, what should I expect? I've regularly used the 444 cards. Pretty much exclusively for years we've been using the GIGE-APC-HV. On a tower with 9 devices, I lost 8 of them. We've had 0 problems on this tower since adding the surge cards almost 6 years ago. A mix of Ubnt/Cambium. The one device that survived was a Powerbridge (the shitty panel) with one of the old surge cards that has an LED on it indicating power. All 8 other devices needed to be replaced on the tower. What should I expect the surge cards to do? I keep reading that the card should sacrifice itself so we can just replace the card on the ground instead of the radio on the tower - better for a 1 person fix, way cheaper, ground instead of tower, faster, etc. The tower owner is a big Motorola R56 guy and gave us the thumbs up with how we did the grounding. Did I just get screwed hard for some reason? An employee of the tower owner came out and had to fix some of their gear for their two way Motorola radio stuff, too, so maybe it was just a really shitty day. 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