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Re: (ET) Charger bad - Tim's Troubleshooting probably like many of us - but important lesson. and thanks . . .

Tim: Thanks for the lesson about the ferroresonant transformer.

I have been pretending to be an Electronic Technician for almost 30 years.

The main reason I say 'pretend' is the number of times a 'humbling'
experience similar to Tim's 'possible troubleshooting precedure error' has
killed LOTS of my time and money.

In fact, my 'favorite' dumb thing to do is: immediately jump right over or
past some obvious clue, then go on to check everything else, and 
eventually,
I come back around to the first thing I looked at.

So, to Tim, I say, thanks for admitting this publicly, and 'Join the Club
!', and 'I bet you won't make that troubleshooting error again' :>)

Just for variety I like to make NEW troubleshooting mistakes :>)

 I think these 'discovery stories' we all share are great - because no one
would really pay attention to the one sentence 'lesson' or 'moral of the
story', but, after reading stories like Tim's, and relating it to something
similar we have all gone through, we are paying attention - and we realize
he is trying to help us all save a HUGE amount of time, money and
frustration in maintaining our tractors.



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tim Humphrey" <hump evgrin com>
To: <elec-trak cosmos phy tufts edu>
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 11:05 AM
Subject: Re: (ET) Charger bad


> OK, here's an update.
>
> Ever have one of those "What the Heck" kind of experiences....?
>
>  - - - - -middle edited to reduce email size - - - ->

>  - - - -The only thing I can think is
> I originally had a bad connection, and my troubleshooting procedures were
> wrong! In fact, I'm pretty sure this is the case!!!
>
>
>
> Important Lesson:
>
> In order for the tertiary coil in a ferro-resonant transformer charger to
> function, there has to be a load on the charger, you cannot check for 
> peak
> output voltage with the charger open circuited.
>
> -- 
>
> Stay Charged!
> Hump