[TowerTalk] LMR-400, damage?

[Roger (K8RI)]

On 7/20/2010 9:19 PM, GALE STEWARD wrote:
> All the lightning damage I've ever had to coax cables was pretty easy to find. It blew the cable apart in several places!
>    
I lost a run of 7/8" Heliax with no visible signs when we had the 
repeater here. a TDR display showed a short about 20' down from the antenna.

73

Roger (K8RI)
> 73, Stew K3ND
>
>
>
>
> --- On Tue, 7/20/10, john at kk9a.com<john at kk9a.com>  wrote:
>
>    
>> From: john at kk9a.com<john at kk9a.com>
>> Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] LMR-400, damage?
>> To: TOWERTALK at contesting.com
>> Cc: list at qx.net
>> Date: Tuesday, July 20, 2010, 8:26 PM
>> I think that it is unlikely the LMR
>> was damaged, especially since you have
>> no other evidence that a lightning strike occurred. 
>> While cable damage is
>> possible, I have had numerous lightning strikes and have
>> only seen one cable
>> failure, a generic RG-213 where the outer jacket blew
>> apart.  You can
>> physically look at your cable and perhaps check the SWR.
>>
>> John
>>
>>
>>
>> To: Towertalk<towertalk at contesting.com>
>> Subject: [TowerTalk] LMR-400, damage?
>> From: Steven McGehee<list at qx.net>
>> Date: Tue, 20 Jul 2010 16:43:03 -0400
>> List-post:<towertalk at contesting.com">mailto:towertalk at contesting.com>
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have a 150ft piece of Times Microwave LMR-400 in
>> production with one
>> end inside structure and the other connecting to a
>> transceiver on a
>> rooftop. We had some electrical storms come through in the
>> past few
>> days, and one evening we lost both the transceiver and the
>> IDU (indoor
>> unit) controller of said transceiver. Both were damaged and
>> acting
>> strangely, replacing just one of the two didn't work. To
>> get the system
>> functioning again we had to replace both the transceiver
>> and the IDU.
>>
>> My question is, assuming the damage was caused by lighting
>> (I haven't
>> found any hard evidence to suggest it was, but, it seems to
>> be the case,
>> awfully coincidental otherwise) -- could/does LMR-400 "get
>> damaged" by
>> lightning? I feel like that's a very basic question, but I
>> just want to
>> be sure we don't need to replace that cable in addition to
>> the two
>> components we have replaced. Since the replacement work
>> (two days),
>> everything has been fine, but I didn't know if maybe,
>> somehow, the
>> internals of the LMR were potentially damaged too.
>>
>> On that note, is there anyway to test an LMR cable? In
>> Ethernet
>> scenarios I use a Fluke brand cable tester, is there a
>> similar tool that
>> can be used for "checking" LMR-400?
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
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>>      
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