What use is an F-call?

Recently I had to repair one of my antennas. It had fallen on hard-times, strictly speaking, it fell on hard concrete when it fell off my fence, but the outcome was the same, it broke.

When I had a chance to see inside the broken component I realised that it was plastic. In my case the part that broke was the Phase Coil, it's the bead in the middle of my multi-band 2m/70cm antenna. The part was made of two metal grommets, with a plastic pipe between them. Inside is a copper coil - presumably tuned for purpose. When I saw inside this coil I realised how fragile this part really was. Until then I'd had no idea that the part was made of plastic, let alone that it might break so easily.

I've said before that I've set-up my kit at least every week since I purchased it, so at least 50 times or so. It's not sitting on a desk, bolted in place, set-up just so, it lives inside a rolling toolbox that I take from site to site and then it gets taken out and put together each time.

I started wondering what the duty cycle was on some of the components. How often can you remove the face-plate from the radio, how often should you connect the power lead in the life of the radio? What is the expected life of the antenna connector and the speaker jack?

Until my antenna broke, none of these things had occurred to me. I just looked at my trusty little rig as an indestructible piece of kit.

Now don't get me wrong. Connectors are not falling off, knobs are not loose and threads are not wearing out. That's not the point I'm making. What I'm attempting to point out is that you might use your equipment for many purposes in many different environments, or you might use it in one place for the rest of its life.

One day you're going to introduce your kit with something on the wrong side of its operating envelope. When that happens, be prepared to learn something.

I'm Onno VK6FLAB