Brett Gazdzinski wrote: > I ignore it. > Never had a problem.
<snip> > If you are running equipment you have to worry about because the line > voltage > is slightly high, its bad news, things are supposed to have some headroom... I'm pretty much with you on this one, Brett - although I can see a problem for equipment that is older than the 115v standard running at 129V! Yipers! I'm in the middle of Vermont using the largest power company in the state, CVPS. I have a plug-in AC meter which I use to monitor the line voltage. It stays right around 115-117v. I don't recall ever seeing it drop below 112 or go up to or over 120. Another ham I know lives north of me maybe 35 miles and has a rural electric company. His power tends to run low. But as Brett says, wasn't most equipment built with some amount of tolerance for over/under voltage? Not a lot, but certainly a couple-few volts? Most of the gear I have states clearly on it 115VAC. When did this standard come along, sometime in the '40s? I'd find it hard to believe that the 'primary voltate' around 1960 was 108 volts as one response to another list stated, but I wasn't around until '61 so I can't say for sure. At any rate, unless you have wildly fluctuating voltage like some do in rural areas (129v is TOO high IMHO) or the gear is quite old, like from the days of 110v, I can't see that it would be much of a problem. 110v gear I'd use a variac for, not so much for the few volts of higher voltage but more because the technology and processes weren't as refined then so it's probably a lot easier to fry something. Things like insulation in transformers comes to mind. What sayeth the enginners and electricians out there? What is considered a safe range for 115vac? +/- 5 volts? When did the 115v standard come into being, and what were the design standards then as far as voltage tolerance? It would seem to me that some out there have a legitimate reason to be concerned, but probably most of us don't. Todd/'Boomer' KA1KAQ
