New perspective? Re: [1000mp] Sticking relay problem

Thu, 25 Mar 2004 14:27:04 +0000

My experience supports the perspective offered by N3OK. I have a 
1996-vintage MP which occasionally had "sticky relay" problems and also a 
first-dit chirp.

Then I moved to a new qth where the antennas are located much further away 
from the house. The grounding system is also better. Since then have had 
absolutely no symptoms of the above problems.

Perhaps rf in the shack is responsible for at least some of the reported 
issues.

73
Rod Elliott VE3UW, VE3IRF

At 22:05 03/24/04 -0800, you wrote:
>Interesting thought exercise. However, in my case, the problem first
>appeared on the other side of the planet (3B9R) and was still there when I
>got home. I also have enough antennas to know that the problem manifested
>with all of them.
>
>Garry, NI6T
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: [email protected]
>[mailto:[email protected]]On Behalf Of Scott Galbraith
>Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2004 5:05 PM
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: New perspective? Re: [1000mp] Sticking relay problem
>Importance: High
>
>
>*This message was transferred with a trial version of CommuniGate(tm) Pro*
>I've noted and just "read the mail" on this topic several times over the
>past few years. I don't normally get too involved in these things because,
>even if I experience a similar problem - I rarely have time to really
>diagnose and provide detailed engineering perspective.
>
>However, thought I would finally throw another factor into this equation
>based upon my own problem/solution.  It may be that the focus on the
>"sticky relay" is a focus on a "symptom" rather than the root cause.
>
>I have experienced the described problem at least three times over the past
>2 years. It was baffling and not "consistent" that I could tell at first.
>Twice it "cured itself". The third time I effected a cure and upon
>reflection decided that the cured item had also been an existing parameter
>in each of the earlier two circumstances - but I had not correlated it at
>that time.
>
>All three times that this problem happened, I had antenna problems - and
>not necessarily very obvious ones and in at least one of the cases also a
>shack ground problem. The antenna problems were associated with broken or
>intermittent shield or center conductors in feedline and the ground problem
>was present the first time that I experienced this failure. The antenna
>problems were not immediately obvious because they were intermittent (as
>the wind blew) and/or the Quadra and external tuner box were masking the
>immediate impact (things appeared to work at times even when they were
>not!)  In all three cases, when the ground and/or antenna problem was
>fixed, the "sticky relay" problem went away on it's own - immediately. The
>third time I empirically established the relationship by recreating the
>antenna problem and observing the immediate return of the "sticky relay"
>problem.
>
>Therefore, I suggest that the  relay/switching problem may be related to
>excessive RF in the shack and/or ground-loop situations which may not be
>enough to prevent loading and apparently successful operations - but may be
>enough to affect the relays or their driving circuitry. This might also
>explain why shops, using good antennas and/or dummy loads (and probably no
>linear) might have difficulty recreating the problem observed by the
>equipment owner.
>
>Those of you with more time and test equipment than I have may wish to
>tackle this problem from a different direction and see if you can observe
>the same correlation that I have noted. As I said above, I had this problem
>3 times, it was fixed all three times without any work on the rig and I
>have never experience the problem when my antenna/ground system has been
>connected and functioning properly. My use had been in net, contest and dx
>oriented operations and I almost always am running the amp for those
>activities.
>
>- For what its worth, my 2 cents.
>--
>73 de Scott Galbraith
>N3OK, Frederick County, MD
>FM19ji
>ARRL, QCWA 30013, GERATOL 2198, PVRC
>NAVMARCORMARS - NNN0OPY, NNN0GAW
>National Communications System SHARES
>mailto:[email protected]
>
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