A film of oil with some dirt attached is still transparent to the RF.


HOWEVER if you wipe the antenna that is attached to a thin skinned
aircraft you will MOVE the antenna slightly. Maybe just enough to
restore connection in the rusty connector joint or the broken solder
joint.
Wiping works just not for the reason stated.
JF

On Mon, 03 May 2004 17:49:46 -0600, mikem wrote:



wrote:


Clean oil is an insulator.

An oil film with who knows what gunk in it is not such a good insulator.

So, if you change the oil on your antenna regularly...

Nevertheless, I stand by my statement.

In order for dirty oil to effect the transmission, it would have to
carbonize the oil into a conductive track shorting across the insulator
at the base of the monopole. The peak power output from the transponder
is about about 250W, which puts about SQR(250*50)=~110V across the
antenna base.

A little dirty oil will not arc over at 100V!

MikeM