A word of warning.... I recently replaced the Federal Pacific circuit
breaker panel in my home because it was full of circuit breakers that might
fail!
Some time ago I had an occurance of a short in my HB amp where the amp
breaker tripped but the panel breaker did not - I didn't pay much attention
to it then.
Recently I had reason to go into the panel - completely unrelated to any ham
activity. Upon removing the cover, one breaker appeared to be 'loose' and
there was considerable heating apparent on the bus where the 'loose' breaker
was supposed to attach - this breaker was for a lighting circuit.
To make a too long story short... There is lots of documentation online
about Federal Pacific panel and breaker failures - especially two pole
breakers failing to trip & panel fires when the breaker/bus connection
fails.
Federal Pacific is apparently no longer in the home market, but these
breakers are still available. The sad thing is they are getting 'rare' and
command 3X the price of other brands.
The fix for me was a new Square D panel.
73, Bill
----- Original Message -----
From: "Phil Clements" <philk5pc@tyler.net>
To: "2" <2@vc.net>; <ToddRoberts2001@aol.com>; "AMPS" <amps@contesting.com>
Sent: Sunday, October 07, 2001 4:35 PM
Subject: Re: [AMPS] CIRCUIT BREAKER FOR TRANSFORMER PRIMARY CIRCUIT
>
> > // With the 18 - 20 db amplifiers that I built, I trusted the
> > electric-mains' junction-box breakers to open if there was a problem.
It
> > works.
>
> I do about the same thing here. Each of my amps have their own
> dedicated 240 volt outlet, with breakers in the electric mains junction
> box sized to the load of each. As back-up, I use the large Buss NON
> type fuses in each power supply. I found that most of the cute 20-30
> amp breakers for panel mounting on equipment racks are much slower
> than the common breakers used in service entrance panels.
> If your glitch resistors and breakers are sized correctly, the breakers
> will pop, and the resistors will not after a fault. Otherwise, most any
> breaker can be made to work. The value of the glitch resistor is
> selected to limit energy discharge from the filter caps to 50 joules,
> and the wattage of the glitch resistor is selected to keep it from
> self-destructing while the breaker is in transit. Sort of like designing
> a step-start system in reverse.
>
> (((73)))
> Phil, K5PC
>
>
>
>
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>
>
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