[TowerTalk] There's 'ground', and then there's 'ground'

[K8RI on Tower Talk]

> In HF power amplifiers, I have found a good general rule of
> thumb is this:
> At 30 MHz is the clean braid from RG-8 cable has about the
> same current carrying capacity as #14 or 16 tinned solid
> buss wire.
>
> It's quite common to have braided leads of rather large size
> overheat and fail even at just several amperes at radio
> frequencies.

I've replaced quite a few coax cables from the tank coil to the relay on a
number of well known amps.
The braid would get hot, the dielectric melt right where it went into the
shield, and then short.

It was easy to fix and I never saw it damage anything else, except for a few
DXers dispostions. <G>

Roger Halstead (K8RI, EN73 & ARRL Life Member)
N833R, World's Oldest Debonair (S# CD-2)
www.rogerhalstead.com