New to to two way radio. Wanting to find out where I should put a lightning protector in my coax, close to the antenna or the radio. live in florida lot of storms in the summer.
There are lots of view on this all with some sense, but the general view seems to be that they are best near the access to the house, where you can get a very low resistance connection to your real ground. This always then cause grief with waterproofing. If you put them inside then that high current pulse coming down the cable would be inside your house, which isn’t very good. Up the antenna, there’s always a chance that the strike is on the house side of the protector, and of course a long length of ground cable up to the antenna is a higher resistance path.
In the UK, we simply don’t use them. We get lightning, but don’t usually bother with the protection - those in real lightning zones do!
I put mine on the coax before it enters the house, this way it is located closer to the ground. the best protection is to disconnect the coax when a storm is approaching. I also put another ground on the antenna mount.
Always closer the the radio for surge protection. They are correct though that you do not want to put it inside your house and it needs to be connected directly to ground. Disconnecting the coax is always an option, but keep in mind that if you have an ungrounded coax dangling and there is a strike it is going to take the path of least resistance to ground. That isn’t always the ground on the tower.