I’ve recently lost 4 3000L with sector antennas at the same time which I must suspect due to lightning.
On internal inspection no visible damaged inside the 3000L but definetely something was fried on the electronics side, seems some sort of short on the low voltage power rails after the PoE circuit, PoE circuit appears OK.
Radios, PoE 30V inline step down and switches which each 3000L was connected to weren’t damaged. Hence suspect some sort of EMP killed the 3000Ls.
Have no lightning arestors installed, units aren’t earth and using UTP.
Would earthing via the lug on the rear of the 3000Ls offer any further protection?
Can’t find any information in the manual on recommendations either.
thanks,
Rob.
At the VERY LEAST you need to be using shielded cable. This will provide a path to ground for the static buildup that is happening on the radios and cable. Bonding the radio and using a lightning arrestor are both best practices as well.
ive never lost a radio to lightening and I don’t follow best practice either.
I do this: use good cable with the added drain wire and solder it to the metal rj45s at both ends. Put a ground spike in by tower and bond your POE switch to this spike, bond your mains power to the spike and bond your antenna’s mast to it, and bond all antennas to mast. Use grunty af earth cable from antenna mast to earth spike, and decent stuff from radio’s to mast. Also use grunty stuff from POE switch to spike.
If mains power comes from far away, like a house that’s 50m from tower, cut the mains earth wire completely and only use your local earth spike at tower for all grounding.
Doing nothing will result in more losses. Losing radios sucks.
As a coincidence - we lost two 3000L and 4 300c radios (same basic hardware) early yesterday when there were nearby lightning strikes. It reminded me that last time there were nearby strikes in the same area we lost some of the same 300c radios. We have never lost any other Cambium radios in a similar situation, or in the same area.
The radios that failed were grounded and had surge arrestors inline.
I wonder if there is some component in the 3000l/300c that is especially sensitive?
Maybe co-incidence. Just that we’ve rarely lost radios in the past.
The 4 x 3000L that failed were mounted on the same tower with 2 x V3000, 1x V2000 and 1 x V5000. All mounted at the same height and randomly spaced around the tower approx 2 meters from the top. (It’s a rather large existing tower). They didn’t miss a beat .
Two difference I see between the devices, the XV2 and V series of radios are by default grounded via the standard supplied brackets.
3000Ls have a large sector antennas compared to the V series, hence providign a greater surface area to absorb EMP/ESD??
Anyway had another site go down, but it appears to be a significant hit. Anyway nothing like a 4000km round trip service call to start the year off!
Keep you posted on my findings.
I wonder the same thing. I have a customer that is on his 5th radio in 18 months. After he lost the first 2 we installed a lightning arrestor and grounded it, and he still loses a radio after every storm. We also use shielded cabling.
Yeah, we got rid of every 3000L radio. They blew up left and right with lightning even with shielded cable and shielded flexible conduit running to them. Think the L stands for lightning. Went back to regular 3000 units. The 3000 units take a direct strike to die, a 3000L will die with a close hit. This is in Arkansas though, so it is lightning central. The old 1000 2.4 radios and the 3000 non “L” radios are solid equipment, but we finally stopped using 3000L units after 12 of them died in about 6 months. Also, the regular 3000 units just have way better QOS and service. You get what you pay for I guess!