"Tropicalizing" can help with fungi and other stuff that grows in excessively humid and warm climes. It's not specific to a sea air environment. Indeed, salt tends to kill many fungi! In warm climates water evaporates from the sea. Such water vapor does not carry salt. It's pure water. But when it condenses on things it provides the moist environment where, combined with warm temperatures, fungi thrive!
And that might be a significant difference. I notice that those like Tom, who reported seeing some corrosion issues, are on the eastern coast of the USA. I'm on the west coast where it's much, much cooler. The Pacific ocean along the US mainland coast about 51F year around - cool enough to produce hypothermia in a short period of time if someone is in the water without a survival suit. (There's a reason the neoprene 'wet-suit' used by surfers and divers was invented independently by three different avid surfers - all who lived on the California coast!) We don't get the humid, moist air here folks along warmer waters experience. Mold and fungi can be issues here, but only where people carelessly allow high temperatures and condensation to occur repeatedly such as laundry rooms with poorly-ventilated clothes dryers. I've never found condensation in any radio equipment. Ron D'Eau Claire -----Original Message----- In the old days we used to call it tropicallising, now it's called conformal coating and refers to a material either sprayed, painted or dipped onto the electrical parts. Conformal coating for military is very expensive and time consuming involving inspection with a uv lamp to pick up the uv die in the material, to descover imperfections and can be up to 3 layes thick. If you don't keep you equipment in an air tight box, then leave it switched on to slow down the deposition of salt products. I think this works by keeping the interior warmer and thus higher air pressure to prevent the ingress from the surroundings. Of course when you switch off it cools and the pressure falls and drags in the cooler contaminating air from the surroundings and that's when the damage starts. So, switch off and immediately put into an air tight box. It all sounds a bit excessive, but the other way is to coat everything with bare metal with a suitable coating, like the one mentioned from another reply. The lacquer and and varnish sprays that you hold 6" away are only partly effective because tall components create shaddows and the spray doesn't get in properly. They work on the solder side fairly well, but the cut off component wires do not get a coating - it runs off. Genuine conformal coating comes expensive, is thick and does not run. Last time I boug ht some it was about £40 for 400mL (circa 1990) made by Dow Corning but there are more types to choose from now. If you spray, use several layers and get right in between the components; let it dry between sprays. Take care that on some rf components you may get a small shift in value upsetting your carefully trimmed filters etc. David G3UNA > > From: Tom Zeltwanger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: 2007/04/17 Tue PM 03:34:29 BST > To: "Fred (FL)" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > CC: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [Elecraft] K2 near the sea: leave on or not? > > I operate from the shores of the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. The water > there is > only moderately salty but corrosion is very rapid compared to my experience > with inland QTHs. I was wondering if this would be a problem for my equipment. > So far, no problem. I imagine anyone near the sea shores has this problem. > > 73, > > Tom KG3V _______________________________________________ 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
