Earthing strap and lightning protection

[pmik]

Since the Fourways Golf Park tower was decommissioned I lost signal completely. I can only find signal above the house now, so I'm going to move my antenna from inside the ceiling to an outside wall of the house, mounted around roof-height. This worries me a bit and leads me onto the inevitable question: can anyone recommend an approach for lightning protection and earth-strapping. Is anyone currently doing this with a MyWireless + antenna solution?

Can anyone suggest a suitable lightning arrestor (and where to get it), preferably that can be snapped in between the female and male n-type connectors between the cable and the antenna?

How thick should the arrestor cable be? Is 1.5mm solid copper ok?

Thanks for any advice.

 

[Headend]

I've recently had Webb do some lightning protection stuff for me. Very professional, but not cheap. However, they may sell you the stuff to do it yourself. If I remember correctly, you do get n-type gas arrestors that go in-line. They used 8mm cable to 2 x 1 metre ground spikes. Make sure the cable doesn't have any sharp bends in it.

A wise move with summer storms just around the corner!

Headend
<font size="1"><b>Tower:</b> Mintek (82) - <b>Signal:</b> 25% (Poynting Grid Antenna) - <b>Firmware:</b> 5.0.1.62/A2 - <b>256k</b> package
<b>SNL:</b> 9dBm <b>BER:</b> 71% <b>RSCP:</b> -77dBm <b>ISCP:</b> -88dBm - Smoothwall and PPPoE</font id="size1">

 

[Donovan]

Most definately a wise move.

I currently have a patch antenna mounted in my roof, and in the cupboard below that is my wireless router and the modem. I'm currently using a manual lightning safety system (I hear thunder, I unplug devices []). Just how sensitive is my router/modem to power strikes? Only from the antenna side or from the power line side too?

I'm really more concerned about my iBook... but obviously if I unplug it completely when a storm approaches and use only wireless internet, it will be fine.

 

[dorris]

Something I think is more important than lightning protection, is GOOD EARTHING, as your topic says, ensure your antenna is earthed, if it attracts lightning to it, your iBOOK will be the smallest of your worries, consider the effects of losing the end of your house the antenna is on.
These things were discussed in length in the topic on mywi users and jaWUG, go read the posts, many users are of the opinion that lightning arrestors are useless.