On August 21, 2016 at 15:05, wireman121 said...
I bet if I removed the grounding wire from all the connectors on my LV components that the problem would disappear, although that's not solving it just hiding it
That also was what station engineeers in Nebraska thought. They only made things worse. Earthing (not to be confused with safety ground) is essential for protection. Bad grounding (ie multiple earth grounds) can also make damage easier.
View cited L-com protectors. Those protectors do not do protection. A note at the bottom says,
Proper grounding of lightning and surge protectors is required to ensure proper operation. Connecting the ground lug on the protectors to an earth ground is the recommended method.
In reality it is more than recommended. It is what does protection. Protector is only a connecting device to what actually does protection.
Read a case study for that Nebraska radio station at:
[Link: copper.org]They even upgraded another critically important ground that defines the 'primary' surge protection layer - at a utility pole.
Even ethernet between two buildings must have a properly earthed protector at both ends of each cable. Two ethernet protectors exist; one for PoE and another for non-PoE ethernet. In every case, that protector also has a dedicated connection for that low impedance (ie less than 3 meter) connection to each structure's single point earth ground.
Any wire that enters without first making that earthing connection (directly or via a protector) will compromise protection.
EMP is not destructive. EMP is a noise problem. For example an antenna is designed to maximize power from E-M fields. So a nearby lightning strike might induce hundreds or even a thousand volts on that antenna wire. That voltage drops to tens of volts when an NE-2 neon glow lamp conducts maybe a milliamp. Transients from nearby strikes are easily eliminated even by what is already inside appliances.
In one case, lightning struck a building's lightning rod. That means maybe 20,000 amps traveled to earth on a wire. Just four feet from that wire was an IBM PC. It (and all other office equipment) did not even blink. 20,000 amps only feet from a computer meant greatest EMP. Even that EMP did nothing to electronics. Did not even create a software crash.
EMP is hype since protection already inside appliances makes that irrelevant. EMP can cause noise on audio signals; amplified and output on speakers to sound harmful. Reality: it is only noise.
Always of concern is how that surge current gets from a cloud to distant earthborne charges. That current causes damage. A protector is only as effective as its earth ground - as demonstrated by a Nebraska case study. Protection is always about how that current flows without getting inside either building.
