I recall we were having problems on an AM tower, and after consulting with
the station engineer we added ferrite cores on all of our cables that were
tuned for AM frequencies.  He told us that as a side benefit the ferrite
core would help us stop blowing ethernet ports during thunderstorms (which
had been happening).  I don't claim to understand all the magic, but that
engineer was right and we did stop losing ethernet ports.

Incidentally, all of the ferrite cores we installed on our cables on the AM
tower were warm to the touch, so I guess they were soaking up the AM radio
signal off of our cables.

I'm not sure if this is what you meant by inductor, but I think a ferrite
core is technically an inductor, and you sometimes see them built into DC
power cables.  If that's what it is, it won't hurt and from my anecdotal
experience it might help.

-Adam


On Wed, May 28, 2025 at 7:44 PM Adam Moffett <[email protected]> wrote:

> By inductor do you mean a ferrite core?
>
> On Wed, May 28, 2025 at 6:01 PM castarritt <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> Tarana is telling everyone to switch to a DC power cable for their radios
>> that has a big inductor for surge suppression.  Is that really a good idea
>> though?  We use a Transtector DC Defender (SASD based) SPD at each BN, and
>> they want the inductor in between the SPD and the radio.  If the only surge
>> event that we needed to worry about was a voltage spike on the DC line,
>> this might make sense, but that's not what happens when the tower is struck
>> by lightning, right?  The whole structure and the radio chassis/ground is
>> getting energized when the site is struck, and my understanding is that the
>> DC lines need to be brought to the same potential by the SPDs to avoid
>> damage.  Wouldn't putting an inductor on the DC line between the SPD and
>> the radio be counter productive?
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