My Old Landy
Engineering Mayhem
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Are those switches with ceramic rotators and a lightening arrestor any good or just a £200 gimmick? I have refrained from getting one as they are pricey and I am sceptical
- Thread starter monkeymark
- Start date
AKN
Master of Disaster
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- 434
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- MK Buckinghamshire GB
Just a gimmick! To be effective lightning protection needs a system approach, all the gas discharge / spark gap “protectors” have a certain amount of let through energy. The antenna input to the tx/rx needs to be protected to above this level. This also applies to solid stare transient protection such as MOVs and Transorbs. The only sure way is to disconnect the aerials when not in use.Are those switches with ceramic rotators and a lightening arrestor any good or just a £200 gimmick? I have refrained from getting one as they are pricey and I am sceptical
My Old Landy
Engineering Mayhem
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- North Lincs
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I thought so, cheersI will have to design a quick disconnect as I find it difficult to undo the PL259 connectors.
DAPPH
as dyslexik as I'm daft
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When FIL Eric was a young apprentice back in the 1930 at the Bowater paper factory in Pegs bay their quick disconnect was a razor sharp fireman's axe .I thought so, cheers
For the first six months of his apprenticeship it was his job to stand 8 foot back from the electrician and if he noticed the sparky making sparks he had to chop the inch thick cable through in one hit .
He did it twice in his first 6 months of his apprenticeship .
Not long after that they got a tester meter and it was Eric's job to test cables to earth to make sure they were " DAID " before anyone worked on the equipment .
25.4_mechanic
Member
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Lightning and electrostatic discharge still need to be solved, but my answer to "PL" is:
Go "N" -> better handling, easier to attach cables, lower losses, better shielding ...
Carsten
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25.4_mechanic
Member
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If the charge has reached your house, it has already gone a little too far.
We build HAM towers in such a way that we ground the whole metal frame via a really FAT relay - the path into the ground and the buried radials is the default path (!) - only if we want to match the entire tower as an aerial, we switch the tower to coaxial inner conductor and ground to the shield.
Works great.
Carsten
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The_Yellow_Ardvark
https://www.death-clock.org/
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A bit of rocking horse poo.
Try getting that if you are not working for the company.
DAPPH
as dyslexik as I'm daft
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BT network termination boxes that you plug a lanfd line phone into have simple gas discharge devices in them , we've been hit by lightening twice over the years ,the phones still worked after BT had replaced all the burnt out phone lines . Yet all the equipments connected to the surge protectors & our UPS device got fried along with the four surge protectors and 2 UPS devices .
Farside
Badly Welded Man
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My quick-disconnects are BNCs. As I'm not running anything above 100W, that's no problem for them.I thought so, cheers
I have an old video panel that I've refitted with 50ohm BNCs, so just unplug all radios in a few seconds when lightning is around.
25.4_mechanic
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Well done!
And meanwhile there are also good low loss cables in 5mm, you don't have to rely on RG58 for BNC!
Multiple (mast-)preamps for RX out there?
BTW: Is it possible to work from your island EU-115 on 2m in SSB or CW K, W, N, A, without EME and Meteor Scatter? Thanks.
Carsten
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Farside
Badly Welded Man
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I was using RG213, but it's a bit too lumpy for short interconnects.
I've been moving to mini-8 for interconnects. Never used RG58, even though I have a drum of it. I'll find a use for it, as it's one of the good ones.
There are a couple of Rx antennas to go up and they'll have pre-amps, yes.
Nobody has yet spoken X-Atlantic on 2m from Ireland, but they keep trying. Takes a bit more than a beam on a pole.
25.4_mechanic
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Last edited:
Farside
Badly Welded Man
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Haha... that's what it was for originally. I got the drum of cable (and a load of other stuff) when the Seagate factory closed down. They must have been using it for Token-Ring old shyt networking. Mind you, it was in 1996.... downgrade your Ethernet to 10-Base-T, life is hectic enough ...
Carsten
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brewdexta
The biggest tool in the box
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A box of 30mm Shadowfoam, 5 sheets in all.
Each sheet is just bigger than the drawers in my spanner cabinet this is the metric drawer, Britool Hallmark combination spanners on the left, standard Britool on the right. That big one may have to live somewhere else, a mate who retired from his HVAC job recently gave it to me.
It comes with a scalpel and blades
First cut to size and fit in the drawer, its curling up on the right a bit, should be ok once it has some weight on it.
Next job is to arrange your spanners, just getting a few of may standard Britool out, it reminded me that some are a bit suss, I think only the centre and possibly top one are genuine, the rest counterfeit. Serves me right for buying them a couple at a time on ebay, probably about 10 years ago.
I'm going to put them in sideways to save space. I may just do the Hallmark combination ones to start with and think about these dodgy open ended spanners.
Not sure I'll get any further tonight, its the youngest daughter's 14th tomorrow and she's got friends around on a sleep over trashing the house so got to keep any eye out as the missus is out at a concert with the eldest.
Cheers
Andy
Each sheet is just bigger than the drawers in my spanner cabinet this is the metric drawer, Britool Hallmark combination spanners on the left, standard Britool on the right. That big one may have to live somewhere else, a mate who retired from his HVAC job recently gave it to me.
It comes with a scalpel and blades
First cut to size and fit in the drawer, its curling up on the right a bit, should be ok once it has some weight on it.
Next job is to arrange your spanners, just getting a few of may standard Britool out, it reminded me that some are a bit suss, I think only the centre and possibly top one are genuine, the rest counterfeit. Serves me right for buying them a couple at a time on ebay, probably about 10 years ago.
I'm going to put them in sideways to save space. I may just do the Hallmark combination ones to start with and think about these dodgy open ended spanners.
Not sure I'll get any further tonight, its the youngest daughter's 14th tomorrow and she's got friends around on a sleep over trashing the house so got to keep any eye out as the missus is out at a concert with the eldest.
Cheers
Andy
cocker
Member
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- 796
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- lincs , England
We used tools like that for underpinning .
It's making my sack shrivel just looking at it !
The last time I saw mine it was reinforcing the concrete .
