lightening strikes

  • Thread starter Thread starter karambos
  • Start date Start date
Yeah, *baby*! Now, _that's_ what I'm talking about.... (;-)

The Phone Company has just about the best idea of how to keep gear alive through bad conditions- primarily by having had so much of it fried over the early years. What looks like overkill, isn't: phone systems need belt, suspenders, skyhooks, superglue, and offline generation all at once...

And when you take a strike, that "whack" of all the conductors, waterpipes, nails, and steel beams jumping in the B-field is still much more disturbing than the flash or the thunder. I'd imagine that that'd be a real interesting sound, out in the racks!

I grew up in a town that was small enough and rural enough to have a step-by-step switchroom (my mother was a Bell operator in the 50s). I've never heard a more righteous sound than that exchange roaring along... Modern switchgear just doesn't have the same soul, somehow. Sigh.
 
Skippy;

Now that is what I was talking about! Few residential occupants will go to the extreems you did, but you now have the assurance that you are partially protected. Thanks for the exhaustive explaination of how to one up mother nature. She is truely THE BITCH.

Phil
 
skippy said:
Lightning. I live south of Denver, on the top of a ridge, in the area that has the second highest incidence of lightning strikes in the US (highest is the Tampa Bay area). I also run a business

<snip-snip>

After all the avalanche diode engineering, how the heck did you have any money left for equipment?????

:)
 
Well, the lightning protection stuff was just a cost of doing business here, so it is capital equipment that gets depreciated, and that depreciation offsets revenue... The decision was easy for me, because I couldn't afford _not_ to have it, so I just built it into the business plan.

Didn't have to design it, either- just had to research and spec it. To probe further (in case anybody gives even a half a shit about this stuff):

http://www.edcosurge.com/products/html/lanblk_24_5.asp?prodid=4
http://www.edcosurge.com/products/html/cohp_series.asp?prodid=8

Just the same, it took about a year to pay off all that stuff so that I could have some loose money to build the studio with.... First we work, and then we play. It helps that I'd taken 10 years off from music to just work off debts and save up, too.... (;-)
 
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