I have to agree and disagree.
I agree there are many "gimmick" line conditioners out there.
! agree the utility should provide a proper distribution system.
I somewhat agree that converting to 14VDC and floating a battery should help.
The big transformer on the power supply should do a nice job with that.
Here's where I disagree:
There are many different levels of power conditioning. Don did not ask for
just a straight surge protector. He asked about a power conditioner. While most
power conditioners have some type of surge protection, surge protectors do not
do anything in the way of line conditioning.
I'm not going to pretend to be smarter than I am, but one of the most
important things I have experienced that good power conditioners do is
filtering of noise and stray voltages that often get sent to ground by poorly
designed equipment and crappy power supplies (Typically switchers) somewhere on
the local power grid. The noise and voltages can really hose things up with
many of todays sensitive microprocessor based equipment, where ground is
supposed to be a clean and absolute reference. Thru expierence I have had
control and pc based equipment be very flaky without good power conditioning.
Add a good power conditioner and it works very stable.
I also work with very high resolution display devices, and the differences a
good power conditioner can make with those is very noticible to even an
untrained eye. In fixed pixel devices like Plasma or LCD good line conditioning
can reduce noise and grainyness VERY easily seen by the most basic grayscale
test patterns. I cannot explain totally why, I'm not that smart (but I bet
someone else on the list probably can), but I can say I have seen the
difference on a daily basis.
As for the surge protection component, you do not know where the surge or
spike enters into the line. If it enters in on the users side there is nothing
the utility can do about that. I have seen more than a fair share of instances
where the local surge protector took the hit instead of the equipment. And the
better surge devices use other methods than an MOV to do it now in much better
fashions. Surge devices that only use cheep MOV's (the $10 hardware store type)
do not suppress many of the smaller or quicker spikes that come down the line,
and employing the MOV design itself has been proven to contaminate ground with
noise and stray voltages, again screwing with those sensitive devices.
As a side note- if there was something that the utility does not have right,
good luck in trying to get them to correct it! You need to be a pretty big fish
to get their attention, no matter how wrong they are! We had a client that was
having all sorts of power problems. We rented a logging AC meter and plugged it
in at his location, and there were periods in the summer where he would be at
98VAC for periods of an hour or more! ComEd (our local utility) when presented
with the evidence said "unfortunatly sir, the feed to his area was not designed
for the humber of houses there now, but since theres only 7 houses (There were
7 10k+ sq ft houses, I would gress all with 400A service) it's not likely it
will be changed". Not enough revenue to justify the infrastructure in their
eyes. He screamed and hollered for more than a year, even took some legal
action, but evantually gave up and moved.
Now- How relavant any of this is to an amateur grade repeater, I don't know.
Will any user notice any real difference? Probably not. But I would be willing
to guess as controllers get more elaborate and microprocessor based it may come
into play at some point. I just think simply dismissing powerconditioning in
general as a gimmic is an incorrect statement.
Tom
W9SRV
Eric Lemmon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Don,
Thanks to some advertising hype being spread by manufacturers of so-called
"surge suppressors", one might think that some kind of a surge suppressor is a
"must-have" accessory. Not! A properly-designed electrical distribution system
does not need such pathetically inadequate gimmicks. As a power engineer for
Boeing, I see many instances of our IT people being pressured to install surge
suppressors where they are completely unnecessary.
It is the responsibility of the utility to provide an AC power source that is
appropriately protected with fuses and surge arrestors at the distribution
level- usually 12kV or 22kV. Once inside the radio shack, each station should
have a properly-grounded 120 VAC feed, along with appropriate protection of the
antenna feedline. The highest priority should be to ensure that every conductor
that enters each radio equipment cabinet has the *SAME* ground reference for
protection.
If you are converting the incoming AC to nominal 14 VDC floating on a battery,
you should be okay.
73, Eric Lemmon WB6FLY
---------------------------------
Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha!
Play Monopoly Here and Now (it's updated for today's economy) at Yahoo! Games.
