Jim,
I too have the pleasure of enjoying the wonderful Kansas Storms...
Our main tower had been hit three times (in a row, in one season) while
i have been using it for wireless, and I got fed up with changing out
the equipment each time. I have found that on most of the towers, if it
has a good ground, and you leave some of the tower, or a pole up higher
than your equipment, there are no Lightning problems. On our main tower
however, it was not grounded well. So in doing a little research I came
across this kit from glen martin (I am sure there are others out there
too) http://www.glenmartin.com/catalog/lightning.htm
It came with everything but the wire to run down the side of the tower,
which i was able to purchase from our local electric dept.
I installed it, as well as drove a rod at each leg (it was a self
supporting tower with three legs) and grounded each as well. since this
was installed, I have not had a single problem through two seasons of
storms now. I also installed a surge protection system , in my equipment
room, that is connected to a ground bar that is tied to the tower as
well. (an electrician told me to make sure your have your grounds tied
together. Something about ground differentials, or equipment from two
different grounding sources. I cannot remember the exact reason)
In the past it seemed I was losing the equipment (or more specifically
the mini-pci cards) from at least one tower everytime it decided to
cloud over, due to another problem as well. Come to find out most of
that problem was related to static build up on the antennas. (in fact
every Omni directional antenna i had nearly, popped a card each time it
clouded over) I found a solution to that as well, which you can read
about here ( http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=9734&hilit=
Topic:Wireless card recieve blows issue, in Wireless Networking Category
) on the Mikrotik Forums. Again Since implementing it, Havent lost a
single card.
Hope this all helps.
Jaron Parsons
Sumner Communications
Jim Stout wrote:
Spring arrived in Kansas City and so did the thunder storms. I took a
lightning stike on my tower and lost both APs, the POEs, two switches and a
Mikrotik router. The Antennas survived but it looks like I lost a little gain.
My question is how do I protect against this happening again? Are lightning
rods effective? Any thoughts will be appreciated. I don't want to have to
replace everything again.
TIA, Jim....
Jim Stout
LTO Communications, LLC
15701 Henry Andrews Dr
Pleasant Hill, MO 64080
(816) 305-1076 - Mobile
(816) 497-0033 - Pager
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