On 07/16/10 12:29 pm, Randy Emerzian wrote:
William, Flex Users,
A Polyphaser or similar protection device connected in series with the FLEX
Radio and your antenna, with a GOOD ground connection may have saved your
station. The cost of a Polyphaser is less that the shipping cost to send your
Flex Radio in for repair. The devices can be found at the following URL:
http://www.polyphaser.com/Products/prod/coax/
I require this protection on ALL commercial installations I do. Be sure to use
a #6 ground connection, or better to the device.
We have a whole-house surge protector, a Polyphaser surge protector via
which all the shack equipment is powered, Polyphaser protection devices
on coax and control cables at the top and bottom of the tower and at the
SPG in the shack. Just about every significant electronic device is
powered through APC Uninterruptible Power Supplies (which also
incorporate surge protection). Everything is connected to a #6 ground
wire running around the house, with multiple ground rods.
A month or so back, a lightning strike took out the HDMI connections on
our DirecTV receivers, the network connection on a TV (via which it
could access the 'Net for weather info., news, stock prices, etc.), the
on-board network interfaces on two computers, the cable modem and
router, the 3.3V line in a computer power supply, a 120V-powered
smoke/CO detector, and a serial card in one computer (it's actually
charred). Also, many of our DirecTV HD channels are missing, so I think
one of the LNBs might have got zapped.
The 5K's antenna terminals were all shorted at the time, and it suffered
no damage.
Moral: no lightning protection measures are 100% effective. Not so long
ago I read a piece about a hotel in Florida that installed $50K
(1980-something $, IIRC) of lightning protection equipment; a lightning
strike took out all that protection equipment and the stuff that it was
supposed to be protecting.
73
Alan NV8A
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