[TowerTalk] homebrew low voltage surge suppressors?

[K4SAV]

ersmar at comcast.net wrote:

>Dick:
>
>     I found a few white papers on how the Polyphaser, ICE and Delta lightning supressors work and posted about it: http://lists.contesting.com/archives//html/Towertalk/2006-03/msg00548.html .  Enjoy.
>
>
>73 de
>Gene Smar  AD3F
>
>  
>
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Those ICE articles on how their units work seem to have some 
misinformation. When lambasting the competition they make this statement:

"The use of a gas discharge unit as a sole-source mechanism for 
neutralizing lightning currents delivered by heavy coaxial line 
conductors is controversial. Gas units have only a small dissipative 
power rating, seldom exceeding 1 watt. While the devices can handle 
large jolts of thousands of amperes of current, they can perform that 
service only if the entire impact event lasts only a few microseconds. 
Lightning currents, especially slowed down by time constants due to the 
inductance of transmission lines are much slower to begin, endure, and 
end. The result is rupture and failure of gas discharge units, requiring 
frequent replacement and down time."

On the Polyphaser site, looking up the IS-B50HN-CO suppressor that is 
popular, and going to product specifications
http://www.polyphaser.com/datasheets/IS-B50HN-C0.pdf
we see that the current rating is for 50,000 amps for the typical 
lightning waveform, 8/20 microseconds.

There are other examples of similar nonsense in this same ICE article. I 
also find this same type stuff in other articles they have written. I 
would say that ICE needs to clean up their act.

Jerry, K4SAV