blown decoder

[scrappydoo]

woke up this morning after the big lightning storm in sydney. I've got a fortec and xtreme stb - both dead. looks like lightning hit both of my dishes and blew up both the decoders. Foxtel and ADSL also seem a bit doolally. Foxtel cable isonly playing unencrtpyted channels and I can't get sync on my dsl line <sigh> hopefully that's just the exchange.

Back to the decoders. Is there normally any chance of salvaging these units? I can't see any kind of fuse protection on the circuit board.

john

[Ocean]

Lightning is generally very nasty when applied to decoders, first thing to check is the power supply, second check would be your insurance policy.

[scrappydoo]

Lightning is generally very nasty when applied to decoders, first thing to check is the power supply, second check would be your insurance policy.

thanks dr fixit. :-)

Looks like my home contents insurance does cover lightning damage.

[wtyt2]

thanks dr fixit. :-)

Looks like my home contents insurance does cover lightning damage.


Wait till you get your replacement before saying that. There are lots of fine prints in them paper you signed. One of them might read: One is required to switch off all electrical good and unplug them from the wall socket as a thunder storm is nearby.......... :eek:

[bassett]

As someone said, it does knock out the power supplies, sometimes it also travels accross the mother board, and distroys the chips...

As for insurance companies,, While you might well have insurance for pregnant blue camels attacking satellite dishes on a full moon, Did you list all your electronic's seperatly on the insurance policy.. I,m not saying that they won't pay out.. but there is a good chance they will tell you, that your stuff is outside the normal insurance parameters, and as you have not completed forms AG119, they are unable to pay out..
Insurance companies are very good at taking your cash, and even better at refusing to pay out.

[scrappydoo]

As someone said, it does knock out the power supplies, sometimes it also travels accross the mother board, and distroys the chips...

As for insurance companies,, While you might well have insurance for pregnant blue camels attacking satellite dishes on a full moon, Did you list all your electronic's seperatly on the insurance policy.. I,m not saying that they won't pay out.. but there is a good chance they will tell you, that your stuff is outside the normal insurance parameters, and as you have not completed forms AG119, they are unable to pay out..
Insurance companies are very good at taking your cash, and even better at refusing to pay out.

mhhh. well I live in hope. lodged the claim and I am now awaiting an electrical report to be done ;-) this is a bit of a joke. it will cost them more to send out this "electrical" person (I am quoting) here than to just give me the cash.

The xtreme has something now rattling about inside of it, so somethings blown its clogs. You are right though, there is a $300 excess on the claim, plus I lose my no claims discount, but I still come out ahead if they pay.

I am just very happy that my new (christmas present) pioneer dvd hard disk recorder is still fine.

Looks like it took out the adsl modem, the foxtel cable stb as well. I hope the lnbfs are ok as I have no stb to test them with and I didn't claim for them as well. thankfully I can replace the dsl modem myself and foxtel are coming to replace their box.

[Ocean]

If you piss the (your) insurance company off with constant claims they are sure to piss you back.

Perhaps best to "wear" it, but make sure your unpaid claim is on their 486....take their advice and remove feeders, and make sure you are in the (insurance agents') fridge/daughter during the next flash event.

...brutal but fair....

[The Lizard]

Insurance companies are realy wonderful people to deal with:D
Until you want to make a claim:eek:

[simmo]

If I were making a claim, I would make sure my pioneer dvd hard disk recorder wasnt fine!! .............;)

[The Lizard]

Might as well mega test the Computer while your about it:D

[VK2XSO]

You might find that lightening didn't directly hit your dish. Firstly, you'd be a lot more sure about it. A big trough storm ground stike, you'd know lightening hit your dish because there would be a big brown stain in your undies.
When they hit the big 110kV powerlines on the hill behine my place, the strike is loud. When one hit the pine tree across my street, it instantly turned it to woodchips and scattered them up and down the street. I found bits of pine tree on my roof the next day and I'm 30m away from tree.
It killed every port on my ethernet lan. Every PC's lan card was dead and so was the switch. A cordless phone was also toast. Everything else was ok.

But just because it wasn't a driect strike this doesn't mean that lightening wasn't the cause. A nearby lightening strike can cause damage in one of three ways.
Firstly, a streamer may have hit your dish. This is like a small lightening strike but much smaller and much less dramatic. But I've only ever seen them form on high metal objects and they don't seem to cause much damage.

Second is magnetic induction. The huge magnetic field generated can induce currents into cables and damage equipment at each end. Power, phone and intercom cables etc are examples.

The last kind is ground potential. When lightening hits the ground or an object like a tree or a flagpole. The potential difference set up on the gound can be large enough to kill people and livestock. If a cable runs across this potential in some way, the voltages at each end of the cable can be a few volts or a few million volts. The result is the death of a piece of equipment or a person.
In the case of somebody standing under a tree that is struck, the difference in voltage between their feet can be thousands of volts. Enough to jump through the insulation of their shoes and kill or seriously injure them.

If you have a balloon streached over the end of a big PVC pipe and you pinch the middle and pull it up. The expotential curve formed as you pull it tighter and tighter is representative of the voltage on the ground around the strike.
The steeper the curve, the more damage is likely.

[steveo333]

I always dissconect everthing when a lightning storm is coming I am an electrician have been to some good jobs where lightning have hit houses trees ect
one job the lightning hit a tree 100 ft from the house and blew the phone cords right out of the wall burn the cord right up to the phone blew the main earth off the earthing rod ,blew all the lamps in the house ,toasted the tv computer m wave so i advise to disconect everything
the tree was a large one with a pig in the shed under that tree and was still alive
(lucky pig)

[leslie]

the negitive runs electrons to the positive! the current flow is out of the ground into the sky! lots and lots of them VERY QUICKLY! sucks the guts out of anything it can, once i was working on a 450kva generator when there were multiple "strikes" 500 meters away ! the output voltage njusts dissapears! very impressive show on the part of mother nature!

[VK2XSO]

I do not know much about polarity of lightning strikes, I've never really looked much into the polarity. But somebody posted a picture (Pendle Hill) of a positive lightning strike. Not that I can tell the polirty from the picture, but it looked like a big nasty high current high energy strike from the purple glow of the plasma.

[siliggy]

The old saying "Lightning never strikes twice in the same place" is exactly wrong! It will strike again for the same reason it did last time.

So change things. Run an earthed thin copper wire up any tree you hate. If the TV antenna is not earthed perhaps a heavy cable to an independant earth stake make help. Cold water pipes are good unless they are really gas pipes. As VK2XSO said if it's a direct hit it's all bad. In the case of a direct hit the now improved insurance policy should give you "new for old" on all old that crap you scabbed from the dump then cleaned up for the photo's.

[Guiseppe]

... You are right though, there is a $300 excess on the claim, plus I lose my no claims discount, but I still come out ahead if they pay...

Just remember that your no claims discount is blown , sorry, out the window. It will take years to get back to the level you just had!

If it is only the two decoders then I would suggest just wearing the cost of replacement.

[VK2XSO]

Am I the only one who gets a warm fuzzy feeling thinking about a lightening strike ? Hitting a building ? A direct hit ? And damaging a company's LAN ? An insurance company ? Killing an employee while he's attempting to unplug his LAN cable ? The employee being the CEO ?

[simmo]

Nooo Trash, you are thinking of a Vande Graf...a big one.....and you WILL get caught!!! :D ;)

[scrappydoo]

Just remember that your no claims discount is blown , sorry, out the window. It will take years to get back to the level you just had!

If it is only the two decoders then I would suggest just wearing the cost of replacement.

you only lose the 10% of the no claims discount, so it's around $40. you come out ahead by around $300. I've ordered a new manhattan unit from the site sponsor already - I'm missing ABC from around the country. it's very handy for timeshifting having all of them on b1.

thankfully foxtel has replaced the cable stb and I replaced my dsl and firewall from stuff at work - we distribute dlink/sonicwall so that one was easy to replace and just bin the faulty goods.

[VK2XSO]

Diverted my train of thought to a tandem accellerator. Now that's a big Van De Graff. I would probably go with a Whimshurst Machine for kinky scifi looking generators. But bang for your buck, you just can't beat a marx bridge.