Bill Winkis wrote:
>
>It works...just took down a set of antennas that were up for 9
>years...and the match, etc was sealed and waterproof''d with hot melt
>and after all these years it was still good....
>Took a low temp torch and dripped it all off, and the joints were as
>shinny as when I put it up.....the braid on the co-ax was still shinny.
>Trick is you've got to get it hot so the melt will "Flow" and seep into
>the braid etc.....
>
>Am now building a 4element quad and will use hot melt to seal the
>wire-co-ax joints....and oh yes they make a gas fired cordless hot melt
>gun for tower work....will give you about 2 hours of work time.
>
That's good news, Bill - could you post some details or a link, please?
>Now I wonder if there are any grades to the hot melt it self, like
>good-better-best.....or different viscosity levels when melted...???
It would be very hard to improve on the cheapest garden-variety white
translucent stuff. This is amorphous polypropylene, which used to be a
waste product when a batch of raw materials failed to polymerize into
regular polyproplyene. Then some bright spark said "Hey - look what this
stuff does!" and they started digging it up out of landfill.
There are harder or softer varieties, and also a lower-melting variety
which is sold for use by children, but I don't know how good their
sealing and RF properties are. Since the regular stuff is so good, there
really isn't much incentive to find out.
--
73 from Ian GM3SEK 'In Practice' columnist for RadCom (RSGB)
http://www.ifwtech.co.uk/g3sek
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