Beside a HiPot test you should look for the "silver mirror" inside the cap.
Normally, I think that's the case for vacuum caps as well, there is a barium
film deposited inside the glas envelope. The film act as a vacuum pump to
insure the vacuum is good for a long time. When the film start to get saturated
it turns transparent and virtual disappear. Later, if the vacuum disappears
completely, as if the glass envelope breaks, it turns into a white powder.
You may set it up in a resonance circuit with an inductor and pump some power
into it. I don't really recommend it as it is hard to know how high the voltage
gets. Hopefully somebody else has experience how to do that.
Good luck and 73 de
Hans - N2JFS
On Sun, 29 Aug 2010 09:37:58 -0400, krishna kanakasapapathi wrote:
> Hi all,
>Greetings. I am in the process of building a 160m Inv-L and have
>offered to purchase a 5Kv vacuum variable cap from another ham.
>He has offered to make it good if the cap has lost the seal.
>How do i test this one?
>I have an antenna analyzer, but no Hi-pot test gear.
>The Inv-L + radials are not ready as yet.
>I am in the Raleigh NC area. Any help would be appreciated.
>73s
>krish
>w4vku
>_______________________________________________
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Brown <jim@audiosystemsgroup.com>
To: towertalk@contesting.com <towertalk@contesting.com>
Sent: Sun, Aug 29, 2010 7:24 pm
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] Testing a vacuum variable Cap for an Inv-L
A question to ask is whether you really need a vacuum variable at
all. Unless the antenna is close to a half wave and fed from the end,
the voltage at the feedpoint is pretty low, even running very high
power. Rather, you need a capacitor that can carry relatively high
current, because the antenna is probably being fed at a low impedance
point. If that's true, all you really need is a capacitor of stable
value and with a low equivalent series resistance (so that its
dissipation is low when carrying high current). A length of good
quality RG8 would do that job! I've done it that way, but now I use a
parallel combination of fixed disc capacitors. I tweaked the value
by adding and subtracting smaller caps in parallel until I got it
where I wanted it. Several years ago, I stocked up on a selection of
HV caps at our local electronic surplus house, HSC, also known as
Halted. They have an internet presence.
The other question is why it needs to be variable. I tune my vertical
with a fixed capacitor whose value I tweaked to get a match. As
initially installed, the SWR was under 2:1 over half the band. That's
good enough for most uses, but I wanted the antenna to be a bit more
broadband to make it easier to QSY during contests. My antenna is a
Tee vertical, which is a close relative of yours. So I simply added a
second conductor in parallel with the vertical section, using 8-inch
pieces of 1/2-in PVC conduit as spacers. That made the SWR under 2:1
over the entire band!
73, Jim Brown K9YC
On Sun, 29 Aug 2010 09:37:58 -0400, krishna kanakasapapathi wrote:
> Hi all,
>Greetings. I am in the process of building a 160m Inv-L and have
>offered to purchase a 5Kv vacuum variable cap from another ham.
>He has offered to make it good if the cap has lost the seal.
>How do i test this one?
>I have an antenna analyzer, but no Hi-pot test gear.
>The Inv-L + radials are not ready as yet.
>I am in the Raleigh NC area. Any help would be appreciated.
>73s
>krish
>w4vku
>_______________________________________________
>_______________________________________________
>TowerTalk mailing list
>TowerTalk@contesting.com
>http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/towertalk
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