[Icom] Send Relay "real scoop" from ICOM

[Jerry Flanders]

I wonder if he made a typo in his email reply ;)

Seriously, if there is any inductive kickback at all in a 12V keying 
circuit, you will exceed that 16V greatly. I think ICOM is telling us that 
in a 12V inductive circuit, make SURE you have a properly designed circuit 
to absorb that back emf. My AL-1200 has a snubbing diode across the relay 
that works for me, but if it failed I wouldn't know it before the damage 
would likely occur. Might be good insurance to add another diode to backup 
the first. I wonder if some of those failures we heard about occurred 
because the diode smoked.

To those who say just add another relay - timing goes to pot quickly. Most 
mechanical relays are already too slow to avoid some hot-switching with 
just the one relay. Another conventional relay doubles the delay, and with 
a homebrew isolation relay you need to worry about snubbing it also.

Jerry W4UK

At 08:09 PM 2/19/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>My response from ICOM:
>
>
>The real scoop is UP TO 16V -OR- UP TO 2 amps.  We always recommend the
>use of an isolation relay, such as that manufactured by Ameritron.  Good
>insurance for a rig like this.
>
>Nick Sutton, NS7DX
>Technical Service Representative
>Icom America, Inc.
>---