"Brian Reay" wrote in
:


"Spike" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 9 Jan 2005 16:35:20 -0500, "Jack Painter"
wrote:

Guys, the last time I checked, this was not rec.car.battery. We're
talking about antennas and RF, not DC connections to your car battery.
Using grease, even outside the made connection, will eventually
penetrate the spaces. Maybe this doesn't matter to the 50-100w user,
but it matters to high power connections, the most notable of which
is lightning.

Here in the UK I'll think you'll find the lightning conductors have
greased joints.

I always thought it was the origin of the term 'greased lightning'....


Plus, of course, the issue isn't so much the power as the current when
thinking of high resistance connections. The cranking current drawn via
a car battery terminal is around 100A. If the grease ingress caused a
high resistance connection, the car wouldn't start. In practice,
ungreased connections tend to 'go high' due to corrosion.




It's not normally grease, it's vaseline, which is conductive. I don't know
how vaseline behaves at RF, though. Maybe not too well?