This thread seems to have come around to an Elecraft issue again. Running in parallel is a discussion about whether it's necessary to leave equipment powered on in a marine environment to avoid corrosion. I've serviced a lot of electronic equipment on ships and have seldom encountered either special coatings or corrosion. The exceptions are those things actually exposed to the salt water, such as equipment on deck that is sprayed with salt regularly and occasionally might flooded by a wave. They are sealed in a gasketed enclosure with desiccant inside.
Leaving the power applied might help but it's has become a huge energy sink for our nation - and most nations. In the USA an estimated 5% of our total residential power goes to keeping gear "alive" when we're not using it. The percentage is greater in some European and Asian countries. (I'm not sure whether that's because more gear is running in "standby" or they have less total residential power consumption.) You can plug "standby power" into your favorite search engine and get a whole lot of responses. One is http://standby.lbl.gov/faq.html According to the above site, here in the USA currently 5% of our total electrical demand goes to power equipment we're not using running up a US$5 billion dollar annual bill for homeowners! Of course, most of this gear is not Ham gear left on to keep the cabinet dry or the circuits stable. That's a much bigger sink than the average "standby" power consumer: your TV, stereo or anything that lacks a mechanical switch you must throw to turn it on. All of those appliances have a little keep-alive circuit sitting there watching for the "power on" signal. It's the total of all of those appliances that adds up to most of that 5 billion dollar bill, but you can be sure a Ham rig sitting there cooking away is consuming more than most of those devices - likely more than a dozen such devices. While it's likely most of us can afford the extra cost of leaving our gear powered up to keep it dry, it doesn't sound like the right choice for those who want to be good stewards for our planet. Has anyone considered using desiccants? I believe the one used most often around electronic gear is silica dioxide (SiO2). It's a naturally occurring mineral that is commonly sold in an "indicating" form, small crystals that change from blue to pink as the material absorbs moisture. It can absorb up to 40% of its own weight at normal room temperatures and is quite easy to "recharge". You just put it in a warm oven for a while until it turns blue again! It's often sold in inexpensive five-pound cans by stores catering to the dried-flower trade. Even though I've lived within a few hundred feet of the Pacific Ocean I've yet to encounter any corrosion problems. If I did my first choice would be to reduce the humidity in some energy-efficient way rather than simply leave the power on. If one wanted to be really rigorous about it, a small solar oven could handle the recharging process <G>. Even on ships, it takes months - often a year or two - for something like the old-fashioned lifeboat radios that enclosed about a cubit foot of air inside their case to have a desiccant tube about 1 inch in diameter and 4 inches long become saturated. Ron AC7AC _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
