[Milsurplus] Rebuilding Capacitors

[Sheldon Daitch]

The GE 250 kW transmitters at Greenville VOA have several "sandwich"
capacitors up on the power amplifier deck that were basically two sheets
of aluminum with a Teflon sheet dielectric.  Every now and then the Teflon
would fail and we'd have to take the cap off the side of the PA cavity,
unseal the edges, remove all the hardware, get another sheet of Teflon and
cut all the holes properly and put it back together.

It takes about two hours to fix it. 

If you accidentally feed about three times the normal audio level from an
oscillator, the peak voltage from the modulator section would puncture the
Teflon insulator.  Don't ask me how I know.

73
Sheldon
WA4MZZ

J. Forster wrote:
> Could well be. Pretty sophisticated, requiring some radio knowlege, if it
> was.
>
> On "condenser cleaners" I don't know from the thread whether the reference
> was to a brush or a liquid, but I've seen 20s and 30s radios with cast
> potmetal condensers. It is possible some of those alloys might grow "metal
> whiskers", especially in poorly climate controlled rural locations, and
> cease functioning.
>
>   
>