[TowerTalk] My situation: Is lightning protection needed?

[Art Greenberg]

The discussion about protecting networked computers is of interest to me 
because I have been thinking about an application here. I thought I'd 
start a new thread about my particular situation to see what others 
think.

I have an enclosed, air conditioned barn that I'd like to put my shack in. 
The thinking is, I'd run an Ethernet cable to the house using an existing 
buried conduit (that is now empty) and run the radio equipment remotely. 
The conduit run is about 230 feet. I figure a total run of 300 feet or so 
to connect a switch in the barn to a switch in the house. Our Internet 
service comes into the house.

The barn has its own electric service. There is a shunt-mode "whole house" 
surge arrestor installed in the load center. The service feeder to the 
barn and the service feeder to the house come from completely different 
directions. Both are above ground until they get close.

The antenna transmission lines to the barn would all be run through an 
entrance panel with lightning arrestors, bonded to the barn's service 
ground. All of the radio equipment would be grounded to the entrance panel 
ground. The radio equipment would be very close to the load center.

If I can get a reliable gigabit network running between the barn and the 
house, I could put some of my other computer equipment in the barn as 
well.

I'm in Florida, near Gainesville. Lots of lighthing, particularly during 
summer.

Long prologue. Now the question.

I think its obvious that fiber would provide complete isolation between 
the buildings. But would a copper cable (Cat5e, Cat6) with lightning 
arrestors at each end be good enough? What strike scenarios would be 
problematic?

Thanks all.

--
Art Greenberg
WA2LLN
art at artg.tv