My tower is about 380 feet from the house and the tower and all coax
lines are grounded lightning protected with no problems through a number
of bad local storms.
However, I have a TopTen band decoder switching a TopTen antenna switch
mounted near the base of the tower. At the tower base, the switch
control lines lines ran through a Polyphaser lightning arrester usually
used for rotator protection. These are rated at 82 volts cutoff. When
lightning struck a neighbor's house about 1/2 mile away, the pulse did
no damage to anything else but destroyed every active component in the
decoder. I repaired the device and replaced the Polyphaser with an
I.C.E. arrester rated at a cutoff of 20V. Last weekend when the wild
windy storm front that battered the northeast passed through here, there
apparently was a lightning and thunderstorm. When I returned home from a
trip I found the decoder was again severely damaged with almost all the
active components ruined but no other equipment damaged.
Since installation, this is at least the 6th time some or all of the
band decoder innards have been damaged by lightning and although I am
now an expert in debugging and fixing the problem it has gotten real
old. Anyone have any ideas how I can better protect this device?
TIA.
73, Les W2LK
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