[Amps] Fuses

donroden at hiwaay.net donroden at hiwaay.net
Sat Jan 8 06:00:38 PST 2011


>> Where pray tell do you get a hydraulic breaker?

All the commercial AMs and FMs used silicone-dampened AC overloads.

All the AC current ran through a five or six turn high current relay that was
( at rated current ) almost ready to pull the normally closed contact open.

A surge or over current would open the contact which opened the  
holding contactor ahead of the overload.

I took over maintenence of one transmitter that was always randomly  
shutting down.   One day while looking for parts in the transmitter  
room, I found an unopened bottle of silicone oil, and checked the  
overload and it was dry as the day it was shipped.  I filled the  
overload with the silicone and the transmitter was more forgiving of  
random spikes.  The AC overloads were more to protect the HV  
Transformer in case a rectifier stack shorted..

Don W4DNR



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