[AMRadio] Old Iron or new Iron

[Mel Farrer]

Good story,  I have not worked on the 32V, but have had to save several expensive pieces of electronic equipment that were recovered from ship wrecks.  Other than the obvious corrosion eaten small wires and PCB traces it was worth trying to recover them.  We always did the flush and bake regiment.  Putting the piece in fresh water and allow a continual flush of clean water then baking at 120 degrees in a oven then while it is still hot, painting all of the iron with thinned marine varnish and spraying all of the PCB material with Kylon clear worked about half the time.  The fresh water is only necessary if it has been submerged in salt water, obviously.  The real problem with long term high humidity on unprotected equipment is the level of penetration the corrosion has gone.  Worse case is warm climate and High moisture.  The main thing is to be prepared for a long recovery effort. SLOW and careful is the motto and that you are probably going to
 be successful only about 50% of the time.

Mel, K6KBE

--- On Fri, 2/3/12, rbethman <rbethman at comcast.net> wrote:

From: rbethman <rbethman at comcast.net>
Subject: Re: [AMRadio] Old Iron or new Iron
To: amradio at mailman.qth.net
Date: Friday, February 3, 2012, 8:30 AM

Even new iron gets subjected to such soaking or drenching.

We got a new 1.5MW generator shipped to us by "Bluestreak".  That's 
military designation for top priority.  At least it was then.

Some wonder of the world at Hickam AFB, Honolulu, HI, left it outside 
the shipping hangar during rainy season.

When it finally got to us in the South Pacific, we knew it wasn't ready 
for prime time.

We got it into place inside the generator enclosure, and rigged up over 
a dozen flood lamps.  We baked it 24/7 for over a month.  It got 
meggered several times.  Finally we had enough data to begin performing 
a few Hi-Pot tests.

Finally it passed.

It is always a crap shoot.  Time and TLC can work.  There are those 
instances where no matter what you do, there is no bringing a particular 
piece back.

Take all the advice, try what you can out of everything said, and see if 
it will work.

Obviously, YMMV, and it isn't always possible to get hold of a Hi-Pot.  
Nor are they for the use of the faint of heart, nor without adequate 
expertise.

Bob - N0DGN

On 2/2/2012 9:56 PM, Ka9p at aol.com wrote:
> Seems the best place to ask, I hope.
>
> I've got an old 32v that is a wreck, and clearly had been stored someplace
> where there was lots of humidty.
>
> I figure the poor old girl had something seriously wrong to have been left
> the way she was, and she's clearly not restorable.
>
> But the question is about the old iron.  Other than what may have been  her
> original demise are the odds reasonable that if I go to the hassle of
> recovering the transformers that they will be ok, or is protracted unfortunate,
> storage more likely than not to render that stuff unuseable?
>
> And is there any process you go through under these circumstances to
> condition the hardware before you start to test it under load?
>
> Thanks for your thoughts.
>
> Scott
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