[geeks] Whee! Lightning strikes, AGAIN!

[gsm at mendelson.com]

On Mon, Jul 27, 2009 at 02:49:30PM -0400, nate at portents.com wrote:
>I ask because a year ago I went out and bought two new decent surge
>protectors that also provide protection to equipment hooked up to the
>cable lines, and I'd like to know whether or not that sort of protection
>is useful in a real-world scenario.

If they use MOV's they are not decent. They are absolute POS's sold to 
the ignorant public by charlatans. The only decent ones most people can
afford are sold by Trip-Lite under the ISOBAR brand name. 

Since they have gone off patent someone is making clones of them, and
marketing them to the home entertainment market, their equivalent 
devices sell for 5-6 times the price of the ISOBAR. :-)

The next step up are silicon avalanche diode based ones, sold under the
name Trans-Tector. They are used in places like air traffic control
centers, where they must operate 24/7 in all weather including thunderstorms.

Last I checked their cheap home model was around $500.

There is a company that makes ones for RF applications, e.g. antennas,
cable TV, etc, I'll have to look them up and will post it separately.


BTW, Franklin had it backwards, sharp spikes connected to the ground actually
CAUSE lightening strikes. 

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM