Topband: Resistor Protection?

[Larry Molitor]

lew <lew at dsl-only.net> wrote: This is an easy one after height of  Beverages.  Do you guys protect the 
terminating resistor from the Beverage to the ground rod in a 
unidirectional Beverage?
FWIW, NO! 

My stuff tends to have a short life span either due to "accidents" or intentional modifications. Not to mention every time somebody wants to play on a tractor or graze a cow I have to disassemble every thing.

Repairs and/or mods are more easily accomplished if everything is out in the open. I have standardized on two methods. The more elegant one is a piece of plexiglas with two stainless steel screws that have multiple nuts and solder lugs. The terminating resistor is either soldered to the lugs or wrapped under the screw heads. The connecting wires are wrapped under the excess nuts. I have a tool box full of these pre-made and can swap them out in a jiffy.

The less elegant method uses small wire nuts with the resistor leads twisted onto the connecting wires. I found I can actually replace a broken resistor installed in this manner when the temperature is about 10° and the wind is blowing at 40 MPH!

Even though the resistors are out in the open, they do not seem to be adversely affected by weather. Of course, both in the AZ desert and the WA desert, there is no salt spray to worry about.

The isolation/matching transformer is a different story. I always put them in weather tight boxes with stainless steel connecting hardware. In AZ I would sometimes just pot them in epoxy but that made swapping them out a problem.

73,

Larry - W7IUV
DN07dg - central WA
http://w7iuv.com




 
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