On Mon, Feb 14, 2011 at 02:42:23PM -0500, [email protected] wrote:
>
> On one ship's radar with ARPA unit the picture was jumpy and unsteady in
> many aspects when I arrived aboard. I opened both units and the pcb boards
> were filthy with cigarette tar, dust, and salt (the cooling fan draws air
> from the wheelhouse and blows it throughout the unit). I pulled every
> board (there were about 15-20 of them) in the indicator and the ARPA (but
> not in the high voltage Receiver/Transmitter unit which was in a more
> protected location), took them to the galley and washed them with a little
> soapy water and a paint brush (being careful to keep the water out of the
> trim pots). After blowing the boards dry in the engine room I let them dry
> for several hours in the sun (on marine units all the parts are soldered,
> no sockets for ICs, etc). Everyone freaked out but the Captain. He said
> he had great faith in me. When I put everything back the radar worked
> perfectly (and I started breathing again).
I've fixed a huge number of problems in marine electronics by flushing
the boards thoroughly with TV tuner cleaner (and later, when I ran out
of that, with WD-40 - which seemed to work about as well, although you
had to be careful about keeping it out of pots and such.)
Lots of various kinds of problems can be solved with water and good soap
(specifically, soaps that don't leave any residue; interestingly, a
number of coconut-based soaps fall into this category.) At one point, I
had about 30 CDs that skipped, or just refused to load at all - without
any obvious scratches or physical damage. I put them in a basin in the
sink, put a nice glob of dish soap into it (don't recall which one,
though, but something that didn't leave a residue), and added a bunch of
water; after 15 minutes or so, I carefully rinsed them off, one at a
time, and let them dry. Every single one, barring none, "came back to
life" and played just fine. Made me a believer; I was hoping to rescue
some small percentage of them.
Ben
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