[TowerTalk] Ethernet grounding on tower?

[Steve, W3AHL]

I helped support some mesh-like nodes at the 300’ level of towers.  The LAN surge suppressors protected the equipment on the tower and ground during direct strikes to other antennas (which vaporized) on the tower, but we had failures with the RJ45 connectors on the LAN surge suppressor boards.  The contacts would vaporize due to the surge current and arc over voltage.  We replaced them with a model that wired the shielded CAT5 cable directly to terminals on the board and never had another failure (while I was involved -- I have since moved).

Steve, W3AHL

Date: Sun, 28 May 2017 09:35:52 -0500
From: Jerry Head II <JerryHead at BlountBroadband.com>
To: towertalk at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Ethernet grounding on tower?


 
Finally I have something to contribute to this list.
:-)
We put cameras on towers quite often for the local grubment and we like 
these:

http://www.mccowntech.com/product/800-gige-ss-hv-outdoor-gige-ethernet-surge-protector-hi-voltage/

JH

On 5/28/2017 9:30 AM, John McCormick via TowerTalk wrote:
> I'm toying with the idea of putting a Power over Ethernet camera at the top of my tower, but don't want to defeat all the grounding work that I've done and provide an easy path into the house via the Ethernet. Most of the lightning/surge gear I've seen for Ethernet looks pretty light-weight and for indoor use. Ideally, I'd want to provide a path to ground at the base of the tower, as I do for all the coaxes, as well as a lightning protector in the enclosure box that I have on the side of the house (filled with PolyPhasers). This probably is a bad idea and I won't go forward with it, but thought I would check to see if anyone on this list has experience doing this and if there is an economical solution out there. Thanks and 73, John/K9KE
> _______________________________________________