[TowerTalk] Big vacuum variables..

[James C. Garland]

Just mesh the plates and look inside (I"m assuming they're the glass 
type, not the ceramic type).  If the concentric plates are centered 
with respect to each other and if the mechanism turns smoothly with 
no rattling, then the caps are fine. If they're the ceramic type, 
then about the only way to test them is to put them on a capacitance 
meter and also hi-pot them to make sure the voltage rating is still 
what it should be.

73,

Jim W8R

At 09:38 AM 6/5/2007, you wrote:
>A little next-door to the topic at hand, but I'll use them in antennas
>if they're still good, I promise.
>
>I have a couple of Jensen 3kV vacuum variables that may have been
>shocked pretty hard by a fall.  They were mounted in a chassis on
>teflon plates that i hope absorbed the shock a little, but I wonder
>what happens to them if they're shocked but don't show any visible
>external damage.
>
>I know they're "fragile" but what is the typical failure ?  Are the
>plates inside prone to moving around with respect to each other?
>
>They're free so it hardly matters, but I just wonder if a 4-5 foot
>drop when mounted in a chassis is just a death sentence for these
>things or if they may still be good.
>
>Dan
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*************************
Jim Garland
Santa Fe, NM
www.w8zr.net
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