Lightning Protection?

Whenever you are installing equipment on a tower, you always need to give some thought to lightning protection. A lightning strike on your tower can take out not only your radio, but every computer connected to your network! It is not possible to completely eliminate the risk (a direct strike on your antenna will probably kill your radio no matter how good your protection), but with some precautions, you can reduce it significantly.

During a thunderstorm, electrical charge fields of several thousand volts can build up in an area that can be several kilometers wide. The goal of your lightning protection devices is to discharge this field to ground without going through your radio equipment. This is generally done by a spark gap that starts conducting when subjected to to a voltage above about 500 V, at which point it continues to conduct until the voltage goes away. These protection devices are rated according to how much energy they can discharge in a single incident, and whether they are reusable. The best protectors are gas discharge tubes; they are also quite expensive.

Our radios have a basic lightning protection circuit incorporated, but we strongly recommend that you install the additional protection device that we offer for each model.