Have you ever thrown
a shopping cart out of a convertible at 80 mph to observe the sparks?
How about hooking up a power amplifier to 115 volts AC just to see
how it craters? Your fellow engineers have done these things and
more! If you have a great picture of totally destroyed hardware,
or a photo of a blown circuit, send it to webmaster@microwaves101.
If it gets on the web site you will receive a free Microwaves101
key chain pocket knife! Impress your friends, if not your boss!
Note to mortuary
contributors: please consider that your boss may not find your
submission in the best interests of your Big Company. Lately we've
been getting a lot of "please remove my submission" emails,
try not to send us anything that you might regret.
Note to Big Companies:
Don't blame us for posting your spectacular failures, we only post
what your employees send us. On the other hand, don't rip off Microwaves101
pictures for presentations without permission. Maybe it's time for
some training!
Note to mortuary
fans: we put the new stuff here at the top, but the older disasters
are still here too--just scroll down. Also, in many cases, if you
click on the pictures below you can see higher resolution images.
New for May 2009!
This picture came from Paul, showing the remains of a beefy amplifier.
Thanks!
This is (what's left of)
the input power filter network in a Techron 3020 300V, 200A power
amplifier for a MRI system - one of a 3-channel set. All three
channels were fed from a common DC rail fed by a full-wave rectifier
directly from a 3-phase AC supply. Since it's a pulse amplifier
with quite a lot of electrolytics, there's plenty of reserve to
draw from. The only circuit protection was the panel breaker.
This channel blew up with a shotgun-like blast when one of its
output MOSFET modules shorted. The module itself disappeared into
plasma, along with a good chunk of its heatsink structure. The
date? 9/9/99. I shoulda guessed something bad was going to happen.
We never did find the root cause, but figure it must have been
poor heatsinking and device overheating. We ran these right at
the hairy edge, so didn't even attempt a repair. We replaced them
instead with much larger 700V/350A amplifiers.
Some pix of a CCTV DVR board
from a computer. I noticed that several power rail caps on the
PC motherboard had also bulged but not blown. I'm not sure if
it was the PC power supply that killed the DVR boards or the other
way around. Unfortunately I couldn't keep the boards for a memento
as the client wanted them for a insurance claim. Both DVR boards
had blown in the same place around the V-regulator area.
New for March
2009! These images came from "anonymous ham enthusiast"
who might have blown his cover as well as his amplifiers. Thanks!
Class C amplifiers and and
black powder DO mix!
This is the product of a
bet between myself and a radio geek friend of mine. I had an ailing,
home-brew, ham fest special, 220 MHz amplifier that had an arcing
trimmer cap. After cleaning up some of the "welds,"
the problem persisted.
To be honest with you, I
didn't get much deeper into the troubleshooting process. A fellow
radio geek came over and spotted a can of "powder" on
my "other" bench. The devil's grin appeared on his face
immediately after I told him what I was working on. He bet me
that the spark from the cap. wouldn't be enough to trigger the
mixture. He was wrong! Enjoy.
New for February
2009! Here a video of an acorn stash, inside a microwave antenna.
Anyone know the dielectric constant of acorns? Sent to us by Kyle!
Sorry we couldn't figure out a way to embed the video, just click
the link below to view it.
New for January
2009! These photos came from Richard... the picture on the lower
right would make a scary computer "desktop", click it
twice to see the non-airbrushed details.
The first
picture is a transfer panel that was missing a 4 inch seal
which the birds took advantage of. The flood pictures were
from this year in Franklin, In. during the great flood of
aught8. There was 25 inches of water inside the building and
it sits on a 30" high pad. The last and certainly least
is one of my fellow technicians when we restored traffic.
Also new for January 2009!
This image came from Mike:
You know how the data sheets
on TO-case power resistors strongly suggest the use of high quality
thermal grease? Ever wonder what happens when your tech doesn't
bother? Bustication!
Mike also contributed
an example of an unstable
amplifier (example #4), thanks Big Guy!
New for December
2008: Here's a destroyed radome from a National Weather Service
radar in Reno Nevada that got caught in 140 mile per hour wind gusts
on December 19, 2008. Sent in by Matthew (thanks!) For the full
story, visit
their web site, there are a lot more images than this one! If
you are looking for weather radar images anywhere near Reno Nevada,
for now you are out of luck! In the future, the CASA
project will populate the US with thousands of low-cost weather
radars, and this type of single-point failure will be a thing of
the past.
New for
December 2008! This burning dish came from Jim.
Here's one you might
want to include on your site. This picture was taken sometime
in the early 80's in Dalton, Georgia. A tech was inside
the site doing an inspection when he smelled something burning
and the radios started squelching. He just happened to have
a 35mm camera with him.
Click on image
for a closer look!
Hot path
New for November
2008! These images of a toasted circulator came from Happy_Trails...
This circulator had 2 frequencies
running through it —> 10.9925 GHz & 10.9915 GHz with 296W
at a 50% duty cycle. The only problem is that nobody put heat
sinking brackets on it, therefore causing it to go to a couple
hundred degrees. I now call it the Technicolor circulator.
Click the images to see some
giant, high-resolution photos!
New for October
2008! Here's a pdf
document that shows some toasted transformers in Southern Cali,
sent in by Bill. We're not sure where the photos originally came
from, but we'll leave them in the original document and maybe someone
will fill us in on the back story. Thanks, Bill!
New for October
2008! More pictures from Marcelo of Buenos Aires:
And some people worry about
asteroids... Apparently, it fell down during a particularly windy
day. I´m attaching a couple close-ups of the mounting pole's
base, there you can see the tiny fisher anchors that were used
to fix the radio. No wonder why it was blown away...
New for September
2008! These pictures came from Laszlo.
We had some technical
difficulties and malfunctions, off-line links -- attached pictures
show ice problems and one of them shows our hangman just for fun
:)
Tower is located at Budapest,
Hungary, 350m hilltop. Pictures taken in January, 2004.
By the way, these antennas worked
just fine, after they were de-iced...
Also new for
September 2008! these pictures came from Marcelo in Buenos Aires.
These are two pictures of
an Ericsson Mini-Link E indoor unit that landed in my repair shop.
The nasty looking coat you see spread evenly all over the mainboard
is the good old mix of dirt and water commonly known as Mud.
Pity I don't have a picture of the repair guy's face when he removed
the cover.
He had this "about to puke" look when he came
asking "I guess this is beyond repair, right?"
Note from UE - why
not send these boards for a ride in the dishwasher before attempting
the "repair"...
New for August
2008! This story came from Adam...
I recently had a serious
problem with my self-built main CAD machine (Athlon
64 x2 @ 3.02 GHz, 8 GB of DDR-2 800 RAM, 1 TB RAID 10 array...
You get the picture). I lost a drive on the RAID array, and the
rebuild of the array kept failing... Then lots of bluescreens...
Then lockups if I ran more than 3 of the 4 sticks of RAM... Totally
bizarre, and I kept replacing things and testing individual parts
in other machines trying to find the source of the problem. Weeks
later, frustrated and now weeks behind schedule on several custom
motorcycle parts projects, I was no closer to a solution. Until
I accidentally did something that shouldn't be done, but gave
a result far out of proportion with what should have occurred...
Apparently what had happened
was that one of the two +12v rails in the power supply had failed
--it was now grounded rather than providing +12v, although I never
opened the power supply to find out how the problem had come about,
exactly. The way I "diagnosed" this was while I was
still mucking with the RAID drives, trying to get my precious
work out of the remainder of the array (one drive had a dead controller
card and was known DOA -- don't know if this was the chicken or
the egg in this failure). Well, one of the drives was a "crossover"
drive, a SATA 300 drive that had both a SATA and a Molex power
connector, with a strict admonition against connecting both at
the same time. This shouldn't have caused anything catastrophic...
but in my case, I apparently connected the grounded rail to one
of the connectors, and the working rail to the other, causing
the full rail current to pass through the drive's controller card
and out the grounded rail. I caught the burning component smell
immediately and yanked the power cable out of the back of the
machine, but the deed was done. I gather this was a "sacrificial"
power resistor (capacitor? Hard to tell...), but that didn't save
the drive coils for the read/write heads... Hoping the drive was
still good and only the controller card bad, I tried a known good
controller from an identical drive... And ended up with no smoke,
but no joy, and two dead controller cards. At least I found the
source of my problem (as well as the drain, no gate included!)
Also new for
August 2008! These pictures came from "Anonymous in Southern
California...
Did some
mountain top tower work over the weekend. Saw some stuff (not
ours) that's - umm questionable. . . . Like the Useless Antenna.
Ice damage
on an air conditioner housing . . .
And, not
broken, but have to say, "here is a photo of a big pair
of cans."
Click on images for closeups...
Bad VSWR?
Nice cans
Ice damage
Saftey notiss
Useless antenna
New for June
2008! This image of the guts of an unscrupulous copy of a
circuit breakers comes from Schneider
Electric in the U.K. at the suggestion of Kerry. Let it serve
as a warning that counterfeit electronics parts can be deadly!
Kerry also submitted
a link to this tower video.. yikes! Caution! Turn down the sound
if you don't want to hear the "f-word".
New for June
2008! These photos came from David in Israel.
Here are a few pictures
of some unfortunate pieces of hardware. Although, in their life,
they were not, strictly speaking, microwave hardware, but they
were close support. High voltage power supplies for TWTs, to
be exact.
This photo shows what
happens
to a 10Amp 115V relay, attempting to
interrupt about 500 Amps of (short
circuit) current.
The scarred area in
the middle used to be as green as the grass on the other
side of the proverbial fence. Look at the far right side
for a clue.... The cause – an X7R ceramic capacitor hooked
across two prime power phases. X7Rs like to have a DC bias
on them; real AC makes them crack and short out.
A flashover between
115V 3F rectified
bus (makes 270 Vdc and, practically,
as much current as the wiring survives).
Apparently, due to
some moisture
condensation upon the (removed)
connector.
The mating connector,
which was plugged into the one that flashed over (which
you can't see 'cause it's been removed…), in the previous
picture.
The pins that are
missing were not broken off. They literally evaporated into
thin air!
(Some of the vapor
can be seen to have condensed back onto the PCB in the previous
picture.)
New for May 2008! This
photo came from Dave.
Here's what happens to
a static discharging style lightning arrestor when it is in-line
with a poorly tuned antenna, Hi-SWR! Burnt enamel wire and toroid
core fractured.
I thought I had properly
adjusted my vertical antenna for 80M, then hit it with 1 KW
from the linear....arc popping and spitting in the amp and no
output until I removed this arrestor.
Click image for closeup.
New for May
2008! These came from Nameless Satellite Guy sometimes known
as Charlene when he's playing dressup. Click the images to supersize
the damage!
Here are photos of what
happens when you aren't careful when running a CS01 test, causing
two 1-ohm current sense resistors to set fire to their Uralane
coating.
New for May
2008 (we've been having a busy month!) This set came from
Tim from MN, who simply states:
Apparently ‘school bus’
exceeds the mil spec of this portable radio.
New for April
2008! These two photos came from Zhang in Beijing, illustrating
a mechanical interference problem...
Below are two pictures
I took when I worked on one SNG truck (SNG means Satellite News
Gathering, it is from the Digital
Broadcasting Standards of Europe.) It was interesting ,
it is a dual frequency band system both C and Ku, (See PIC 1),
but it seems like they forgot something: when the antenna rotated,
the output flange of the C waveguide will be obstructed by the
Ku waveguide. (See PIC2).
Finally they made the
system work--good job. Well I think it is still a good experience
to remember.
New for March
2008! Here's some photos of a board roast from Bob:
I’m submitting pictures
of a VME daughter card that failed rather dramatically. The
source of the short is unknown, but you can see the extensive
fusing and charring on the daughter card plus the proximity
burns to the main card. More than a few errant amps went through
the wrong path I dare say. In addition to the unmistakable smell
of “smoke being let out of chips”, actual smoke was seen coming
out of the chassis in question.
We've posted some closeup photos
here, here,
and here. Someone
open a window, that smell is overpowering...
Here's another submission
that's new for March 2008! This almost unbelievable example
of microwave connector abuse came from Liam:
We found this in our lab
a while ago. We never found out who did it but personally I
feel that tar and feathering would be too good for them.
New for December
2007! This just in from Pat:
Please see the attached
photo for the mortuary. Failure analysis: component has seen
an over-current. Overcurrents may happen when you apply 50kV
across a device that typically sees 500V. This was operator
error. Also, I am looking into making the enclosure squirrel
tight after viewing other postings. The IGBT is an amazing device
that compliments the power switch tube, just don't push either
to 100X their rating. From a technical note it would seem that
current is free in a solid state device and voltage is expensive.
The vacuum electron device (tube) has free high voltage and
expensive current. I really like your website, it reminds me
of RF Cafe before all the advertising.
Click on the image to "zoom
in"!
New for October
2007! The following four photos came in from Alex, from across
the pond.
1. A colleague, whilst
on his honeymoon in Cork, Ireland, was confused as to why the
TV picture in their B&B was so bad. Wishing to investigate
further (being an RF engineer) he followed the cable to discover
it led outside of the room window. He peered outside to find
this fine example of an Irish “lossless” TV signal splitter:
(Note to viewers: the above
reference could perhaps be construed as a slur against the great
people of Ireland. We don't want anyone to think we're insensitive
here at Microwaves101, indeed, one of the principals of M101
came from a "two-toilet Irish" neighborhood near Boston
before she married above herself! - UE)
Note to readers:
the following photo might just be the best one on the page, and
for sure it will be downloaded and pated into ESD training manuals
all over the world. Just remember where you found i and give Alex
(and Microwaves101) credit!
2. An ESD inspector had
kittens when he found this high-isolation ESD lead attached
to a bench grounding point!
New for September
2007! Here's two photos submitted by Mark. Don't look at the
second photo right before lunch. Here's the story:
I work at a C-band shuttle
tracking facility at KSC (Kennedy Space Center). After a launch
and several weeks of downtime, we went back to the site to bring
up the system. Everything booted up nicely but the pull-out
keyboard and monitor did not work. We unscrewed the top of the
flip-up keyboard and monitor assembly and WHOA!
A real nice stench and
a whole lot of dead mice… not to mention some circuit board
problems.
Here's the toe-tagged hardware
that was acting up...
and here's what's
going on inside. Gnarly! Next call
the Orkin Man, before you call Tech Support. Click on the
photo for a higher resolution image if you like.
In case you were
wondering where the nest material came from...
There's a few
more photos of this mess, if anyone's interested just ask!
New for September
2007! These photos came from Iraq, by way of Steve. These
are two dishes at a Forward Operating Base in the Baghdad area.
No, Dick Cheney was not hunting in the area, instead they were
clobbered by debris from a 107mm rocket that impacted the corner
of the rooftop (the 3rd picture). Here's some excerpts from one
of Steve's emails:
There was a note in our
orientation papers about knives, saying something to the effect
of, "you only need a pocket knife. If the enemy has gotten
past the walls, concertina wire, armed guards and machine guns,
and through all the armed personnel walking around base, a bowie
knife isn't going to help." I don't care. I take an Applegate-Fairbairn
with me in my travel bag every time I get on a helicopter and
it makes me happy.
I'm on Camp Liberty which
is one of the several bases built around the Baghdad airport.
It's fairly civilized, you wouldn't guess we were at war sometimes,
at least until a rocket lands a couple hundred yards away. It's
godawfully dusty, the dirt turns into talcum powder an inch
thick in some places. A few of Saddam's old palaces are built
out here, so we have a few lakes and some interesting architecture
to look at, not all of them are bombed out so that's kind of
cool, I need to get into some of them and crawl around. Rumor
has it that if you go to the no-man's land between base and
the public side of the airport, you can get all sorts of things
-- cars, guns, etc. I need to find out more about this.
Spare parts are interesting.
Get what you can, when you can and preferably two of them is
the rule of thumb. I work with Raytheon, and they do a pretty
nice job of keeping us in stock with what we need. Praise the
lord for e-commerce and shipping to APO addresses, we can mail
order just about anything we want so that's pretty cool.
Click on Steve's
photos to see full-sized images!
New for July
2007! These photos came from Stephen from Pennsylvania. This
is what happens when you run 1kW at S-Band through your stripline
hybrid coupler. Don't try this at home unless you do it in waveguide.
Hmm, maybe there's a rule of thumb here somewhere...
Also New for
July 2007! These "cobra pictures" came in from Nino
from Argentina, no explanation offered, none needed!
New for June
2007! This is from The Emperor of Leesburg... A friend
of mine in Colonia NJ had a new phone line put in last weekend.
Check out the photo, observe the perfect placement of the drill
bit going right through the electric service cable. Since the
installer shorted the line upstream of the breaker panel, the
only thing that stopped the fireworks was the wire burning open.
I wonder how fast the meter was spinning for the 20 seconds or
so when the lights were flickering in the whole neighborhood?
The technician is lucky to be alive, and the homeowner is also
lucky that his house didn't burn down.
I guess this
could have been done by Verizon, or the cable TV company, or the
satellite company. They all show up at your house with the same
2-foot long drill bit, and their technicians are all about as
well trained.
A local electrician fixed
the mess that Saturday evening. and Verizon paid it, somewhere
north of $1200. There is also some obvious damage to the house
which Verizon is going to have to pay for but has not yet done
so. The electrician asked the Verizon guy if he would pick a lottery
number for him, since his luck was so good.
We've got a feeling this picture
is going to get more than 15 minutes fame, expect to see it on
an Official Safety Poster soon (especially if you work for Verizon...).
Think before you drill! If anyone wants to buy the original
full sized picture (it has remarkable detail), make us an offer
and we'll pass it on to the lucky homeowner...
Update July
2007... here's a picture of the temporary fix that PSEG did
before the
electrician showed up...
New for June
2007! This from William: This is a picture of a (large
microwave company located along the Route 495 Rust Belt) switch
that we blew up in a circuit. This switch is only rated for 20
dBm peak power (absolute maximum) but we were using it in a circuit
where the power was 1 W CW. We had a lot of fun blowing up a lot
of switches on purpose as we researched the problem and looked
for a solution (using a thermal camera to view the junction we
could see that the switch went kapooooww at about +230 degC junction
temp). We were eventually able to get this switch to work nicely
in the application (still required 1W avg power) and had a lot
of fun in the process.
Also new for
June 2007! This from John: We were testing TO-247 "300
watt" power mosfets to see how long they would last at 300
watts actual dissipation, pulsed load, bolted directly to a copper
block. We ran them at 300 watts until they exploded, and many
would not make it past 50 milliseconds. We wound up with an Ixys
p-channel part and an IR n-channel. This is for an MRI gradient
coil driver with about 17KW peak output, 32 fets on a huge heatsink
with copper heat spreaders.
New for April
2007! Here's an RF cable with a problem, it got chewed up
by a positioner! Submitted by Andy, an 18 year old lad doing an
internship with a microwave company in the UK. Thanks for thinking
of us, Andy!
New for April
2007! This just in from Tony... Ever wonder why digital
cellphones suck? If this level of engineering is any example,
it should be crystal clear. OK, so the link would only suffer
when the wind was blowing in a certain range of azimuth. The impact
on the PCS sectors might be less, due to the lower frequency but
good grief. Do people not get basic concepts anymore? Did they
ever know them in the first place? What are they teaching in schools
these days? Am I the only one who thinks this is wrong?
OK, so if the
blades are nonmetallic composite, its still a big slab of dielectric
material, moving through the link path (or one or more sectors)
at a time, varying in thickness...multipath? Doppler shift? If
there is any metallic structure it gets even more stupefying.
Names, companies and location withheld to protect the RF physics
impaired.
New for March
2007! This Agilent ESA-L1500A/E4411A 9 kHz-1.5 GHz spectrum
analyzer was for recently sale on Ebay a "buy it now"
for $1299. It's not worth 1299 cents! Seller "Effy6"
has 100% positive feedback, and warns: Sold AS-IS, no returns
and refunds. We wonder if it powers up? Contributed by Kerry from
down under!
Also new for
March 2007! Here's a FET that is a little shy on gain... check
out the source bridge on this FET! Near as we can figure, the
bonding tool got a little too close and mangled the bridge without
actually breaking it. Amazingly, it still worked! (with about
4 dB lower gain than its undamaged brothers). It was delivered
that way from a reputable supplier that shall rename nameless,
only because we weren't given the info, not because we're scared
of them! This fine bonding job have been done by an engineer,
not a tech. Contributed by Dr. Matt of NRAO!
New for January
2007! These photos came from Michael. "Here are a
few shots of an 3 kWHPA power supply that overheated and suffered
a severe meltdown".... Someone call 911! If you click
on any of the pictures you can view an even bigger image of destruction.
New for November
2006! This from Dave from down under... The attached photos
used to be a Centellax broadband amplifier. Then a pair of tweezers
happened to be in contact with the gate and drain at the same
time. The magic smoke was grey and the chip glowed red for a brief
instant. Need I say any more?
New for October
2006! This from Robert: results of a little "Arcy-Sparky".
This is an RMA from Florida. Seems like one of the hurricanes
decided to dissipate some of the built up energy into our I/O
card. Results = malfunction, cratered chips.
New for September
2006! Here's two photos of an FM transmitter that was damaged
during a storm, from Enrique! Looks like it is all over but the
insurance settlement...
The original of
this picture is huge and high resolution, if you want to see it
in all it's glory just click the image below!
This item is called
a capacitor security valve.
New for August
2006! Here's a contribution from down under... it's a thermal
image of a piece of CPWG on garden-variety FR4 trying to pass
100W of 900MHz RF! It survived almost one minute before turning
the copper into a flaming vapour. Thanks, Max!
New for July
2006! This just in from Fred the Man: "we had a fun mishap
with a temp chamber. The software locked up over the weekend,
holding the chamber cold for a couple of days instead of cycling.
We have a humidifier in the room to reduce ESD." We wonder
if the software guy helped mop up the mess Monday afternoon when
it thawed out... or was too busy writing a macro to send out resumes.
New for July
2006! This is what happens when your power amp supplier doesn’t
believe your advice about their harmonic filter design. From Matt!
New for February
2006! This just in from NASA! This is what's left of the first
stage of an 80-1000 MHz high power amplifier. BOOM! Thanks, Justin!
New for January
2006! As JarJar Binks' buddy would say, "ouch time!"
Below are some of the leftovers from a shoot down at White Sands
Missile Range, New Mexico, donated by our army buddy Steve! As
we like to say, this type of activity should DEFINITELY void the
warrantee. Can't quite make out the part in the center, but Trak
and Celeritek might have some ugly field returns coming in.
Also new for
January 2006! These pictures came from Tres Huevos. What you
see represents a very bad day at work. Here's the story: an employee
was hired to do laser sealing, but received very little training.
He was sealing a package, and programmed the laser incorrectly.
The laser started to burn a hole across the lid, out of control....
So the new employee
decides to stop the later by putting his finger over it. Yikes!
Needless to say, Clean Harbors had to clean up all the bloody
mess, and the employee "retired" on disability, with
one less working digit! And of course, the rest of the team had
to suffer a demeaning lecture from Captain Safety!
Here's a look
at the destruction inside the package... no wonder they wanted
to put a lid on it, look at all of those ugly jumpers!
New for October
2005: Tony sent in this picture from an AM transmitter cable,
that apparently worked better than it looks... we're wondering
how many kilowatts this bad boy had to carry! He submitted this
caption: "please just say no to home brew heliax connectors.
New connectors are not that expensive compared to what you pay
for the cable. Besides, some jerk with a digital camera will take
a picture of it and send it to Microwaves101!"
]
New for October
2005: Frank has sent us a couple of pictures that illustrate
what NOT to do during qualification. "During the EMI portion
of qual testing at an outside testing facility a power supply
failed and applied line voltage to a DC input. Unfortunately the
unit was sealed at this point so there was no fire or magic smoke
to be seen. I just love the way the the legs were burned right
off the regulator (in the second picture). No we won't be using
that facility's services again."
New for September
2005: we've got four new photos of mass destruction... don't
tell "W" or he might invade this peaceful third-world
website!
Let's start with
this photo of a burned Ku-band waveguide window, courtesy of "HP".
He was running at 18.3 GHz doing some critical pressure testing
when it rapidly started to lose vacuum in the TVAC chamber. It's
a good guess that this W/G window didn't like drastic pressure
changes while passing 100 watts! We'd guess that voids the warrantee.
Nice photo, tell us the camera model and we'll look for one on
Ebay...
Now let's admire
two photos from the admirable "NS6Y". Here's a nice
little RF switch, N to SMA, but looks like it got a little lightning
hit! Hmm, are SMA connectors usually black like that? Meanwhile
inside, everything looks OK, except that burnt smell that
just won't go away.....
NS6Y also sent
along some "better living tips" which were no doubt
rejected by that scourge of the airwaves, HGTV... a whole new
take on "microwaves for the kitchen...
"Living
in the Bay Area as I do, I know: balsamic vinegar tastes good!
But, the lousy cork stopper broke! Wah! Well, good old Caplugs
(popular dust caps for rf/microwave connectors) to the rescue,
I think this is about the size for a GR-900 connector, it saved
the day! Like any rf/microwave person, I collect those Caplugs
obsessively and have a nice bin of them."
NS6Y, next time
we're up the coast, how about fixing us a little lunch?
Below is a picture
we took. Here's a new use for your microwave oven... got some
"proprietary" data you want to eliminate? Nuke it for
five seconds in the ol' Amana, and even the CIA couldn't pin that
alleged white collar crime on you! Here's our page on microwave
heating, it's just getting started.
New for July
2005: Tk is a Microwaves101 fan and has his own gallery of
connector and cable horrors (plus tons of other unrelated pictures),
here's a link to
it, but we warn you that you might encounter certain four-letter
words that we don't use on the "professional" resource
that is Microwaves101.com! Here's two samples. The wirecloset
photo is before Tk reworked it. The Nextel picture makes us want
to switch to Cingular, read the message on the phone!
New for June
2005: contributed by Lou from Honeywell in Kansas City. The
title of this gem is appropriately "too much drain current".
We'd guess about six amps too much... next time set the current
limit on the supply for Chrissakes! Click on the small picture
to admire a larger image!
New for February
2005: contributed by Ed - WB6CFW from Sunnyvale, here is a
photo of a solar electric charge controller that was in the power
system of a microwave repeater site somewhere in China. The suspicion
is that lightning had something to do with the extensive damage.
Morningstar, the manufacturer reported never having seen anything
as bad as this one. Of course, the customer was asking for a warrantee
replacement... Excellent photo, Ed!
New for January
2005: here is an example of why you can't just "throw
around a football" in your yard in Tucson Arizona! OK, it
is not a microwave picture, but a disaster nonetheless!
New for December
2004: here is a waveguide adapter employing split-block construction.
The seam is in the worst possible place, and it has solder voids
inside. We have a separate page explaining why
this adapter is worthless.
New for July
2004: here is some mice damage from a remote transmitter terminal.
This photo was taken after the other mess that the critters made
was wiped up. Photo contributed by Jonathan Zane, a.k.a. KC2SHO!
In this second
photo from Jonathan, we see a "field return" unit that
probably doesn't smell so good either...
How's this for
a blown ceramic capacitor? This was a DigiKey Panasonic
cap, rated at 100 volts. It blew with only 28 volts on it, and
it sure stunk up the lab! Gonna have to return it and get $1 credit
on the next order...
Here's a contribution
from the Unknown Editor hisself. Known to occasionally hang drywall
on the side (we don't pay him that much), this is a picture of
a tape measure that almost killed The Man. "I was up on a
ladder using the tape to locate a hole for a ceiling light. It
was extended maybe six feet to the wall, when it decided to droop
down. Right into the 200 amp service panel, which was missing
its cover (awaiting the drywall). The tape lodged itself between
ground and one of the hot strips, and exploded into flames. I
found myself tugging on it, I didn't like the idea of it being
stuck in there. I can't say why I didn't get the shock of my life,
except that I was 'chosen' by aliens to do this web site. I wonder
if this voids the warrantee?"
Everyone
who knows him knows that the Unknown Editor thinks that Hewlett
Packard computers completely stink. It stinks squared if you
are a small business that has only a couple of HP boxes that you
depend on and can ill afford any trouble from one of them. Maybe
six months out of the box, and you get the mysterious system lockup
problem. You HP owners know what we're talking about. The keyboard
freezes, and you have to reboot by pulling the power cord (or
pushing the power button for at least ten seconds if you happen
to read the directions (which we never do). Once or twice and
this would be a nuisance. Five times a day and you start to lose
your mind. Hp's technical hotline keeps telling you to replace
stuff like the hard drive, the modem, and eventually the motherboard.
They tell you "you need more memory", then "you
have too much memory", then "why don't you replace all
the memory?" Hewlett
and Packard meanwhile are doing grave spins at 33 RPM. About
time someone did something about this travesty...
Here at Microwaves101,
we have an HP Pavilion computer that literally cost us 10 times
more in killed productivity and repair charges than its purchase
price, which was more than a comparable Dell (we were stupid).
We are about to get even. We now have on hand a large bag of Mexican
M-80 firecrackers (approximately 1/4 stick of dynamite) which
we will use to blow up the HP box while we record it digitally
for permanent display in the Mortuary. Below are some preview
pictures of this impending catastrophe; stay tuned and come back
soon to see the results... anyone have Carly Fiorini's email address
so we can send her this data?
Below are three
shots of a crashed Cascade Microtech Ka-band RF probe where the
center conductor has lifted off of the teflon insulator (so they
are no longer co-planar). Two things about this incident... the
guy who crashed this probe into a second probe is six foot six
and looks like he might know his way around a boxing ring, so
there's no way to give him any crap about it. We just said "thank
you sir for all of your help!" And second, the Cascade Microtech
bastards wouldn't fix either of the two crashed probes, claiming
that they won't touch anything that is over a year old! But they
were more than happy to ship us two new probes overnight for $1400...
What's that below,
one "slightly used" HP 4034A meter? Our largest exhibit
yet, we're told this unit actually still works! Maybe if you're
lucky you can pick up a similar unit on Ebay.
Ed Nisley sent
us this picture of blasted RF connectors. He says "These
are connectors I salvaged from a friend's satellite TV installation
after a lightning stroke hit the LNA. It chewed up a security
system, flashed a square yard of aluminum off a Celotex panel,
punctured an air-conditioner Freon line, and blew out a bunch
of RF cabling. Yes, he had lightning protection on the incoming
lines. Nothing protects you from a direct hit..." Thanks,
Ed, for your thoughtful photo!
Below are three
pictures sent in by a fun-loving quality guy with an evil laugh,
who who shall remain nameless. The first one is an optical photo
of a blown silicon nitride capacitor on a MMIC. Hey, tell the
bonding chick to keep all three wires on the bond pad next time!
The second picture
is a SEM micrograph of a blown HBT. Tell the process clowns we
need a little higher breakdown voltage!
The third photo
is another SEM micrograph, this time of a blown bipolar power
transistor. Hey Moe, I see the problem, there are too many wires
sticking out of it...