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[TowerTalk] My situation: Is lightning protection needed?

To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: [TowerTalk] My situation: Is lightning protection needed?
From: Art Greenberg <art@artg.tv>
Date: Wed, 10 Jul 2013 10:29:04 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)
List-post: <towertalk@contesting.com">mailto:towertalk@contesting.com>
The discussion about protecting networked computers is of interest to me because I have been thinking about an application here. I thought I'd start a new thread about my particular situation to see what others think.

I have an enclosed, air conditioned barn that I'd like to put my shack in. The thinking is, I'd run an Ethernet cable to the house using an existing buried conduit (that is now empty) and run the radio equipment remotely. The conduit run is about 230 feet. I figure a total run of 300 feet or so to connect a switch in the barn to a switch in the house. Our Internet service comes into the house.

The barn has its own electric service. There is a shunt-mode "whole house" surge arrestor installed in the load center. The service feeder to the barn and the service feeder to the house come from completely different directions. Both are above ground until they get close.

The antenna transmission lines to the barn would all be run through an entrance panel with lightning arrestors, bonded to the barn's service ground. All of the radio equipment would be grounded to the entrance panel ground. The radio equipment would be very close to the load center.

If I can get a reliable gigabit network running between the barn and the house, I could put some of my other computer equipment in the barn as well.

I'm in Florida, near Gainesville. Lots of lighthing, particularly during summer.

Long prologue. Now the question.

I think its obvious that fiber would provide complete isolation between the buildings. But would a copper cable (Cat5e, Cat6) with lightning arrestors at each end be good enough? What strike scenarios would be problematic?

Thanks all.

--
Art Greenberg
WA2LLN
art@artg.tv

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