Can lightening wreck a LNB?

bpmurray

During the week, we had a lightening strike not far from the house, and the phone & sat went out. I have a Sky+ and an old box, so I don't think both boxes would go at the same time, so I'm suspecting that the LNB might have blown or something similar.

Does anyone know if the LNB could be damaged by a nearby lightening strike? If so, I presume the solution is to get the local Sky installer to come along & pop in a new LNB & point it to where it should be pointed. What should that cost?

patrickc

if you look at my thread on sky problems, you'll see i bargained them down to 50 by threatning to canvel my service with them.. normally 100

jhegarty

patrickc2006 wrote:

if you look at my thread on sky problems, you'll see i bargained them down to 50 by threatning to canvel my service with them.. normally 100

Or pick one up on ebay for €20 and fit it yourself....

patrickc

jhegarty wrote:

Or pick one up on ebay for €20 and fit it yourself....

mine came back itself watever was up with it..

wil

you dont really describe the symptoms of your problem but any electrical equipment can be affected by lightning. Of course if you had a direct hit you would know about it, but large quantities of static could knock out your lnb or both digiboxes as they are both connected to the same cables and phone line.
Check your digiboxes at a friends to make sure they are not affected.
If lnb is suspected, there is an lnb reset in the installer menu you could try to see if that helps.

byte

Is your dish on the chimney?

Are both boxes connected to the phoneline? Multiroom or not, both lines should be removed from sky boxes during a thunderstorm.

There is a chance your ESB power supply spiked as a result, something not liked by sensitive electronics!

watty

The phone line is the worst.
It is solely connected to you and the exchange. A strike ANYWHERE between you and the exchange withing 100m of the phone wire could damage every piece of gear connected.

Often phones would servive, but faxes and modems not.

Wil: There is no concept of an "LNB Reset" other than disconnecting the power. Maybe you are thinking id Disqc switch or Motor.

If the Digibox works but says "there is no signal" then it is the LNB. If the menus are faulty in anyway, then the box got fried via the phone line.

ESB lines not as suseptible to damaging equipment unless there is a closer strike or absolute hit (then almost nothing in your house would work).

If you get a strike within 10m of your house, likely everything could get fried. If you get a direct hit (less than 1 in 300 year chance) then you would have damged masonary/roof/brickwork. Any concrete with steel reinforcing can shatter due to current in the steel!

The LNB can get damged by Static, but generally only with an unearthed dish on a Mobile Home or Portacabin, a normal dish is earthed well enough by it's mount and damp of the wall. The LNB is insulated from Dish.

So damage to Digibox rather than LNB is more likely unless lightning actually hit the the house.

wil

Watty
Please explain that to Sky

How to perform a LNB Reset
http://business.sky.com/pop_lnb.html

byte

That's just turning off the power and 22kHz tone, and turning them back on again.

watty

Indeed.
Unpluging the power does that too.

Big corporations only have ordinary people working for them. Also they tend to sink to a lower common denominator. Hence small companies, (or experts like Zaphod, Tony or Byte), if good can be much better than any advice from Sky.

bpmurray

OK, exact description of the problem ....

After a particularly loud clap of thunder, the phones and Sky went off. It wasn't anything near a direct hit (I've experienced that before & it's deafening), so it sounds like the phone lines may have been zapped. However, the Sky boxes have menus, but say there's no signal. I tried the power reset as described above and it didn't help. The dish doesn't appear to have moved, and there's no water on the connectors, so my guess was that the LNB had blown, hence my original question.

Interestingly, the computer didn't go off, and the broadband (on WiMax) wasn't interrupted.

byte

Were the boxes connected to the phonelines?

If you were lucky, maybe it was the LNB... but if boxes were connected to phoneline, I'd say the boxes have been fried.

bpmurray

One box was, but the other wasn't. And the symptoms are identical

byte

OK. Well, it may well just be the LNB so. You'll have to get out an installer to fix the issue, and hope that the fault is the LNB.

Is there anyone you know with Sky taht you could take one of your boxes to, just to see if yours will work on their setup? It would help narrow the problem.

If it turned out to be LNB, it's a job you could fix yourself, provided access to dish isn't a problem.

Was it windy enough to maybe blow dish off alignment?