Tom Rauch wrote:
>>I observed that I'd counted 138 antennas on top, when I
>>was last there. That's without porcupines. They were
>>un-moved.
>>
>>My assumption would be that the porcupines pre-date the
>>knowledge that they do no good.
>
>
> The fact government or private installations buy things and
> install them doesn't mean they work as claimed. Governments
> are also slow to learn anything.
>
> A con artist from Florida selling sliced-up scrap PC boards
> in epoxy sold hundreds of "solid state automatic tuners" to
> the government. These things were just wire wound resistors
> and a powdered iron core wound with a winding that
> essentially did nothing and some scrap components in epoxy.
>
> Now this is a first hand fact, not a rumor.....
> I took a call from a US Government agency that was using
> those devices and couldn't get them "repaired". They also
> had a power failure with them at high power they wanted
> corrected. When I told the head government tech what the
> auto tuners really were and suggested I could put some large
> non-inductive resistors in a housing for him, he said the
> automatic tuners that had "no moving parts" and "ran off RF
> power only" worked and that's what they wanted for
> replacements, not a resistor. He hung up and went off to
> search for the matching system of his dreams, not interested
> in a $150 replacement because it wasn't a "tuner".
>
> A local drag strip did the something similar. Someone duped
> them into buying all these little static dissipaters because
> they always took hits on light poles that ruined the
> electronics at the track, and after they installed the
> dissipaters they still took hits. Nothing noticeable changed
> until he common grounded the conductors entering the
> building where they watched the track (the tower) and
> grounded at each score board. After grounding to common
> grounds and grounding cable shields before connecting to
> scoreboards the problem went way down.
>
I am surprised that the seller did not recommend "extensive grounding"
to go along with the dissipaters. They usually do. This is to ensure
that the dissipaters "work" properly. They don't tell the client that
proper grounding in itself usually cures most problems with or without
the dissipaters.
This is often what happens when people buy those things. They say "see
since I put those dissipaters in I don't have any more lightning
problems". And it is often true that they don't have any more problems.
But what they fail to realize is that is was the grounding that fixed
the problem! They often say that "my installation hasn't taken a strike
since". But with proper grounding it is usually hard to tell whether you
took a lightning hit or not because nothing blows up.
I have seen first hand all of the above.
On one of the boating newsgroups there was a company touting those
magnetic fuel cleaners that go in the fuel line. They stated that the US
Coast Guard was a user of them. Well as it turned out in the letter from
the Coast Guard, they were "tried on a couple of boats and some Chief
wrote a letter that said "they seem to work well" with little other
data. Some test. But that "qualified" the Coast Guard as a user of the
product.
73
Gary K4FMX
_______________________________________________
See: http://www.mscomputer.com for "Self Supporting Towers", "Wireless Weather
Stations", and lot's more. Call Toll Free, 1-800-333-9041 with any questions
and ask for Sherman, W2FLA.
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