[Amps] How Do You Know When Filter Caps Begin to Fail?

[Carl]

That only assumes that the manufacturer didnt get the cheapest available. As 
with most anything cheap comes with a price, even Alpha found that out.

Carl
KM1H


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ron Youvan" <ka4inm at gmail.com>
To: "amps" <amps at contesting.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 28, 2012 11:40 PM
Subject: Re: [Amps] How Do You Know When Filter Caps Begin to Fail?


>   Carl KM1H wrote:
>
>> Why? They aren't much more reliable.
>
>>> I guess switching over to a few oil caps with appropriate bleeders
>>> standing by externally isn't a bad idea after all.
>>> Now I know why Henry used them.
>
>   Electrolytic capacitors and light bulbs are the only items in a HAM 
> amplifier (or almost anything
> else) that have a pre-determined life expectancy.
>   It doesn't mater if 99% of ham amplifiers use brute force filtering it 
> is a bad idea on many
> levels, just the stored energy discharged during "an event" makes it the 
> poorest of engineering
> practices.  It is so poor I discourage it whenever I can.  Like now.
>
>   After working on hundreds of power supplies of all Voltages over almost 
> 50 years, almost 100%
> using Pi network (low pass) filters with oil filled capacitors, a very few 
> had any problem other
> than springing an oil leak, most frequently at a bushing.
> -- 
>    73 Ron KA4INM - All E-mail sent to this address shall linger in the 
> Google cloud forever!
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