Sometimes things go wrong in ham radio. Sometimes it is your own stupid mistake and sometimes you just cannot help it and it just happens to you. On this page there are some things from my “mortuary” that I have memories of. In the end you can laugh about it but at the time were you try to fix things it was not that funny at all.
The welded N connector.
Using a bad quality N male / male transition on my 1296 amplifier it happened that the center pin got welded to the female counterpart. In an attempt get things separated again a part of the female connector broke off. So the lesson from this one was make sure to never use el cheapo connectors.
The punctured mica
Experimenting with GI7b on 1296 there was a nice flash through the mica. It left a small hole of about 2 mm in the mica.
The ladybird problem
A bad SWR on 432 MHz was a bit hard to find. After removing the power splitter the problem was obvious. A lot of ladybirds. I must admit they were all dead. Probably killed during the QSO with 8Q7QQ
The teflon puncture
In an experiment with a GS35 on 432MHz not everything was correct. A 3mm teflon plate got punctured by rf and resulted in a big bang.
An attempt to make a Battlecreek special resulted in the following picture. No need to test the caps anymore.
The burned coax relay
