ceengland(at)bellsouth.ne
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 Posted: Fri Aug 24, 2007 5:39 pm Post subject: Strobes - Light Plane Maintenance Article-capacitor life |
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Robert L. Nuckolls, III wrote:
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<nuckollsr(at)cox.net>
At 09:16 AM 8/24/2007 -0400, you wrote:
>
>
> Yes absolutely but...
> Several people seemed to have problems shortly after first flight so I
> personally did power up my strobes every 6 months prior to flying.
> IIRC aeroflash did recommend that. However I'm sensitive to the issue
> because I have replaced failed electrolytics in consumer electronics
> in as little as 3 years from manufacture. Last week it was a little
> used photocopier. Previous to that was a DVD player. One of my favorite
> troubleshooting tools has become a little in circuit ESR (equivalent
> series resistance) tester for capacitors. I think it was a kit from
> Bob Parker for well under a $100.
> Ken
. . . but was dormant, long term storage the proximate cause
of failure? I've replaced a ton of capacitors in my career
but I can recall no situation where I might have attributed
the part's demise to long term inactivity followed by an
indiscriminate power up.
Bob . . .
I rather doubt that this is relevant with today's technology, but back
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in the '70's the Crown DC-300 was a very popular pro-grade audio power
amplifier with very large (for the time) electrolytic capacitors used
for brute-force DC supply filtering. If an amp wasn't powered up for
many months (unfortunately, no specific count), it was not unusual for
it to take out its protective fuses upon power-up. It would continue to
do so until the big filter caps were either replaced or 'conditioned' by
plugging the amp's power cord into a variac and bringing up the voltage
slowly over many hours. Supposedly, this had the effect of reforming the
capacitors so that the bridge rectifier was no longer looking at a dead
short.
I might consider this an old hangar tale if I hadn't experienced it myself.
Your tidbit of the day...
Charlie
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