[R-390] Orange Drop Capacitors

[Tim Shoppa]

WB5KXO wrote:
> Does someone know why everyone is replacing every
> type of capacitor with orange drops where they can
> get them to physically fit.?  Didn't Collins engineers
> have a good reason for using all the different
> types of capacitors in the first place?

There's nothing fundamentally wrong with over-speccing replacements. Some here get really carried away with it (e.g. putting in 1% resistors everywhere...) There is a certain justification for doing it once in such a way that it won't have to be done again for another 50 years but garden-variety mylars would suffice almost all the time.

But you're right, almost all the brown beauties are used in bypass applications where medium or even large amounts of leakage will have little effect.

And where leakage could have caused serious problems (coupling, etc.), they used higher-specced caps (e.g. Westcaps/Vitamin Q's).

Some here like to pretend that brown beauties were used in critical coupling situations (e.g. protecting the mech filters) but I have not seen this in any of my 390A's.

Tim.