Lightning hit?

[road_rascal]

Had a fairly good thunderstorm move through the area this afternoon. While I didn't loose power, my 522 mysteriously died (now the 4th one since Dec '04). Did all the usual restart procedures and no-go. Dish is shipping out a new one ($14.95 s/h of course). In the mean time, I'm bringing up the 301 from the basement and I noticed that the insulation on the connector from the cable from the dish to receiver is slightly melted. Now, while I have surge protection for my home theater/ computer equipment, how can I tell if my sat system is/was properly grounded and protected? I did read the article from the local news about bad installs regarding grounding issues. Someone school me here...

 

[Van]

Do a search here for grounding threads and you will get all the info you need.


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[hobojoe]

ouch! i would call dishnet and get the dhpp get them to check everything out.

 

[lupe]

road if lightning strike close to your setup there is no ground in the world that will protect your receiver from not being burn you should disconnect antenna and ac when this happens

 

[SimpleSimon]

road if lightning strike close to your setup there is no ground in the world that will protect your receiver from not being burn you should disconnect antenna and ac when this happens

I partially disagree. The grounding will not help at all, but a good coax cable surge protector WILL.

 

[damaged]

Keep in mind surge protectors need to be replaced, usually once a year (some state 6 months), this is because with each time it protects, it wears down (the mosfets), eventually you have a surge surpressor that won't surpress anything, it is better to get a small UPS, it offers better, cheaper (in the long run), longer lasting surge protection, and cleaner power (line conditioner built in) to boot, and of course, 15 mins or so of battery power (if you get one of them small UPSs that look more like a fat powerstrip/surge protector).