NB!!! A call to anyone with mounted antenna

[dorris]

When I fitted my dish, I was just so excited to get into <i><b>the broadband zone</b></i> I quickly fitted it, and got busy downloading, and never looked into the long term coditions, but now is the time!!

I was just asking the new gurus in the thread http://www.myadsl.co.za/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=4497&whichpage=1 about High gain / mounted antennas and lightning protection.
With summer around the corner and rains about to start, you can never be too safe, specially with a crappy paperweight worth R3500.
To summarise whats been said, lightning protectors are essentials, as well as earthing, when I installed my dish, I earthed it, but its feed runs directly into my modem.
Anybody else that had the installers come through, what did they say regarding this, does anyone have a lightning arrestor.
Any other comments regarding this, we've got one eyewitness to a fried AP, anyone seen a mywireless modem after a strike (maybe it could fix some of the inherent problems).

Please post inputs for all to learn below.
Regulators, if this should have gone into the technical section, I apologise, please move it to the correct location.

 

[GougedEye]

I have a roof mounted antenna. Got installed by Powerband (or something like that). No mention of lightning, earthing etc. Hmmm. I'm starting to get that uneasy feeling......

Bloody typical of anything to do with MyWireless.

 

[Nightwatch]

I asked. It was something like R 850 extra, but since it was winter and they said that if I spend extra I can put the antenna way up high, using Wi-Fi to talk to it at some extra cost later, I thought I'd wait until I have to spend for the better reception position and summer rain. It's about time now, so end August I'd have to decide what to do.

<div align="right"><font size="1">DarkLigth Nocturnal Entertainment</font id="size1"></div id="right">

 

[Wireless2]

Some say if the Antenna is not the tallest thing on your house just properly earthing it is fine, just like a DSTV dish.
Properly earthing requires a high gauge earth wire grounded to the houses main ground straps.

But a lightning arrestor put inline with the antenna cable run is good insurance

A direct lightning strike to the antenna would require a very good lightning protector, and without it would blow the modem totally



Just for interest I had a friend whose tree next to the house was stuck and according to a neighbour that saw the strike about half of the bolt went through the house. It blew a quarter of the tiles off the roof and melted parts of the gutters.
Acording to a inspector the gutters wre not propperly earthed and caused the bolt to jump to the house.

So a hit on the antenna could cause a fair amount of damage