Dave wrote:

I saw somewhere that you could use an NE-2 bulb between the antenna "hot"
lead and ground as a static discharge device for a receiver, but can't
find
an NE-2 and don't know anything about neon bulbs. Anybody know if a
standard neon bulb rated at 125 VAC could be used in this manner? Or how
I
could test it? I'm thinking about charging up a 50V electrolytic
capacitor
and hitting the bulb with that, to see if it discharges the cap. I have
a .22uF 630V mylar cap between the antenna and the input to the tuner
because the 35V disc I had there got blown, so I know that static can be a
problem with my setup even though it is grounded at two points.
Would welcome any ideas anyone has on how to make this work...

Thanks,

Dave

Your "standard neon bulb rated at 125 VAC" probably contains a series
resistor of maybe 100kOhms, and so will be not much use for protecting
anything, because any current would develop too much voltage across the
series resistor. If you open it up and remove the resistor then it will be
able to shunt larger currents, though it still may not be ideal for
protecting receivers. (The main advantage of the neon as a protection
device is very low capacitance which could be important on the higher
frequency bands, but another advantage would be that it would introduce
practically no intermodulation even in very strong signal conditions, but
the breakdown voltage is probably so high that it may not protect solid -
state receivers very well, as someone else already mentioned. You can buy
a ceramic cased gas discharge surge arrestor, they are popular for
telephone circuits. e.g.:
http://www.epcos.com/inf/100/ds/ec350xx0810.pdf
)

You can probably make the bare neon bulb flicker by charging up something
with static electricity (e.g. rub a balloon on your head or on a jumper)
and then hold this near the bulb so you can hear crackling.

Chris