[TowerTalk] Re: TowerTalk Digest, Vol 15, Issue 62

[Jim Lux]

At 11:16 AM 3/23/2004 -0500, Bill Ogden wrote:

>People seem pleased with their SteppIR antennas.  These comments have been
>intermixed with the discussion about lightning protection.  This leads me
>to ask about lightning and the SteppIRs.  The antenna contains electronics
>on each element and there are 12 wires to the antenna (plus the coax).  How
>sensitive are these to lightning?  Should the wires (plus the rotator wires
>plus any other relay wires) all be run through a "lightning" protector
>before entering the house?


I can't speak to the sensitivity (or not) of the SteppIR stuff up on the 
mast: I suspect that a direct hit would kill it.  What electronics are 
actually up there?  If it's just a stepper motor, they're it's pretty tough.

I can say that you should definitely run all the wires through some form of 
transient protection.  There are low voltage terminal blocks (much like 
those used for telephone wiring) that would be suitable.  For instance, my 
house has a pair of 4 pair (i.e. 8 wires) protection/demarcation points 
(telco installed) for the incoming telephone lines.  When connecting up a 
weather station (mfr by Davis) at a facility in New Mexico, we used a 
similar device (sold by, but probably not actually manufactured by, 
Davis).  Likewise, we used protection devices on a pole mounted video 
camera on a Pelco pan/tilt mount.

Probably, your goal is to keep the stuff inside from getting killed, not 
necessarily to protect what's on the tower.

Jim, W6RMK