Hans Remeeus wrote:
For example Titanex (www.titanex.de) sells good High Power Ceramics
Relais for this purpose:
http://www.titanex.de/frames/acc.html#UB6-9 (HPRL) with power handling
of 5 kW each.

Palstar in the US use high power relais in some of theire antenna
tuners, but those relays are not ceramic.

Good luck!


I would say good luck also if I assumed a relay could actually be rated
for a certain number of "kW".

A relay that easily takes 50kW in a 50 ohm system could fail at 100
watts in an application like this, so it is foolish to even look at
power ratings in other applications.

In this case when the relay is open he will have very high voltages
across the contacts even with very modest power. When the relay is
closed he will have a few amps of current at low power up to 5 or 10
amps at kilowatt levels.

Not only will he have high voltage between contacts, he will have high
voltages from the contact to ground.

That virtually excludes conventional relays, and it even excludes many
types of vacuum relays. The popular ceramic vacuum relays normally have
too low of coil to contact breakdown plus the terninal spacing is much
less than 1/2 inch.

He probably can get by with a conventional ceramic vacuum relay like an
RJ1A (about $50 US surplus) at low power levels (normally considered a
"5kW relay, whatever that means) , but if he runs more than a few
hundred watts and especially if there is moisture in the air he will
need a HV glass vacuum with opposing terminals for contacts and a long
insulation bar on the transfer solenoid bar.

Power levels depend on the application, and he has picked about the
toughest application I can think of.

73 Tom