Industry Forums > Wireless Service Providers > lightning damage..

lightning damage..

Is it bad when you look at pictures like this and the smell of burnt "silicon" is so common in your mind you can actually smell it and taste it haha?
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My software never has bugs, they just develop random "features".

reply to thewisperer
Oh yummy...

reply to thewisperer
I have one like that that blew the ufl connector off of the R52 mini pci card. Also did the ethernet port like the one that you show.

reply to screavic4

said by screavic4:

Is it bad when you look at pictures like this and the smell of burnt "silicon" is so common in your mind you can actually smell it and taste it haha?

Unfortunately no , when the rumor spreads that grounding increases the potential for lightning strikes and customers get the bright idea to go cut the ground.

OR when we tell a customer that's a power strip not a surge protector it needs to be replaced and they call me and say their computer hasn't worked since the storm

OR when a customer get's a surge protector as requested and grounds everything but the incoming line from their switch / router

I can go on and on lol
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Keyboard not found press F1 to continue.
My software never has bugs, they just develop random "features".

reply to thewisperer
Were you using a shielded cat5 cable with the shielded end on that?

When using shielded cable I float the end on the tower and only bond it at the cable entrance with the suppressor.

reply to thewisperer
That's how you're supposed to do it if I remember right.

reply to thewisperer
I shoulda grabbed pics but I didnt.

One of my brand new APs I just installed with an omni was hit a few weeks after I put it up, they are still picking up pieces of the antenna in the farm fields, and this was almost a year ago..

reply to thewisperer
Looking at that socket I would say that gives a totally new meaning to the term POE.

Wayne
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If you cannot fix it with a buttset and some beanies you ain't a technician

reply to thewisperer

Good times...........

reply to lutful

said by lutful:

said by thewisperer:

just a direct hit on the omni

Curiously the photographic evidence shows an "indirect" hit of ~5kA, most of which was diverted through the omni mount. The PoE "ground" saw just a few hundred amps - that's why you can still see it.

said by thewisperer:

the 411 was toast so was the xr2

If you expect radios to survive 95% of lightning strikes in ON/QC, your pole/mast installation will need to route ~20kA surge current directly to "real" ground.

Obviously you will need to surge protect all RF and PoE ports of radio (ideally shielded in a metal enclosure), with all grounding lugs bonded together and to the pole/mast using short straps.

reply to lutful
no I don't expect it to survive a hit or one nearby but I won't bother grounding customer installs cause it aint worth the hassle!

While I can't speak for Canada. You probably, at the least, should leave options for grounding CPE in the future. It may not be a requirement now, but it WILL be in the future. It'll make life much easier if you just have to run a ground conductor later.
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if you fail to plan, you plan to fail

reply to DSLbyAir

reply to thewisperer

here we go.....

A friend of mine was co owner of one of the largest wisps in Canada.

They had discussed grounding cpe's in meetings and decided not too.

I followed their lead.

I have been on many rooftops where Bell Canada sub contractors have installed a dish for satellite.

No grounds there either.

That's probably because people don't sue so much over there.

I could see someone here blaming ungrounded equipment as the reason they took lightning damage and filing a lawsuit claiming you owe them for everything they want replaced.
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"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Benito Mussolini

reply to thewisperer
Very true and very possible.... Not to mention if the house burned down. Like it was said above... just cuz nobody has done it yet, doesn't mean it's not possible.

Sadly as far as I know there are not hard and fast rules for grounding stuff. (The satellite installers are quite a laughing stock as they do the same thing most of the time) But chances have it that will soon change.