If you get lightning, you can also save yourself a lot of grief by
installing MOV's on all leads at the motor. I've lost several pots due to
induced voltage, but none after rebuilding using new pots and 11V MOV's
(only on the indicator lines), both available from Mouser. I also got some
50V? MOV's for the motor windings.
I've never had a problem with the pots due to RF, but they tend to get
noisy if I havent used the rotator for a while.
BTW, I also put some in the control boxes, as the MOV's they use are for a
much higher voltage and wont keep you from blowing the Zener diode
regulator, lamps, etc.
Has anyone solved/reduced the RF noise problem while turning the rotator?
73, Ty K3MM
Signal Hill Ranch
<shr@ricc.net> To: w2up@mindspring.com,
tower talk
Sent by: <towertalk@contesting.com>
owner-towertalk@cont cc:
esting.com Subject: Re: [TowerTalk]
Tic Ring problem
01/21/2001 10:23 AM
At 07:33 AM 2001-01-21, Barry Kutner wrote:
>This morning, one of my Tic Rings developed an open circuit on the
>indicator pot. This motor had this problem before and was sent
>back to Carl for repair. He supposedly replaced the pot with the
>"new improved version." Has anyone else had this problem
>redevelop with the replacement pot?
>Tnx/Barry
Barry, it was my experience with the TIC rings from a number
of years ago that the pot burned out due to RF pickup by the
leads from the controller. The failures seemed to be related to
the actual lead dress, which is why some people had more problems
than others. The pot leads are in the middle of the antenna and
can intercept a lot of energy if not kept close together and close
to ground. The typical failure was opening of the wiper arm
of the pot. After placing 0.01 uF caps on each lead to the pot
(to ground) at the barrier strip inside the motor assembly I have
never had this problem again. I once picked up about a 1/4 cubic
foot of 0.01 uF 3,000 volts disks surplus and I tend to put these on
EVERYTHING. Never had one fail and they have fixed a myriad
of RFI problems over the years.
Hope this info helps (I had mentioned this on some reflector a
number of years ago--probably contesting.com--but had hoped
that TIC would have solved the problem by now).
73--John W0UN
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