[BC] STL

[Mark Croom]

For what it's worth, I have several NiCom 950 composite STL units, and
they have considerably higher numbers of maintenance/downtime issues
than their Moseley counterparts.

At one point I tallied up all the STL outages we had accumulated over
about five years; we had about the same number of Moseley pairs as
NiComs ; something like 4 of each. I had one Moseley link fail during
that time, and I think I had 5 separate failures of the NiCom pairs.
Mostly power supplies, though one transmitter got weirdly microphonic
and we ended up doing a trade-in with the company. It was a little
funny to be able holler into the vco module and have the guy at the
station be able to hear it in his headphones. But I digress.

I would like to retire at least one of the NiCom pairs to backup duty
(they are front-panel frequency-agile), as I have no backup for the
various 950 links in service at present.

I post this as a caution, not because the NiCom pairs don't meet spec
when they're new, and sound fine, but the switched-mode power supplies
in particular have been a weak point, and often have to be retrofitted
because the one in the box is no longer available. I've also had
issues with electrolytic caps drying out on the input board, though
that's an easy problem to find and fix without NiCom's intervention.

Mark
MN

On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 12:33 PM, Edwin Bukont <ebukont at msn.com> wrote:
>
> Harris has a new STL product.
>
> I have been pleased with the Armstrong STL that one client inherited.
>
> Not pleased with recent Marti products.
>