[TowerTalk] Re: Protecting Steppir control cable

[Didier Juges]

Polyphaser sells a rotor cable protector for 8 wire rotor cable. That may
work well for the Steppir (you may need more than one). It is rated 24VAC.

That raises a question: where do you buy the Polyphaser stuff from? They do
not have a list of distributors on the web site, and they don't seem to
sell direct either.

73,
Didier KO4BB

At 09:21 AM 3/23/2004 -0800, you wrote:
>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