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Re: Protection from ESD / RF


 

As Dave mentioned limiters like mini-circuits VLM-33W-2W-S+ are a good solution. Unfortunately these are hard to get as they are being re-designed, and ebay sellers know this and have jacked up prices to mafia levels.
Fortunately for us, another great solution is the equivalent TAPR, their limiter can be purchased from here

Please *Note* that the TAPR version is only spec'ed up to 6M (54 MHz) and is not as wide bandwidth as the mini-circuits that goes up much higher. Please read the description on the above page before buying.

Another option is the receiver guard from DX engineering

This has an operating range 500 kHz to 150 MHz - still not as wide band as the mini-circuits and has limitation on the lower frequencies unlike the mini-circuits or the TAPR limiters. This unit has BNC connectors and not SMA.

There are many pin-diode based limiters on eBay/Aliexpress, none of them have clear specs, so buyer beware.

Also please note the presence of such limiters still does not guarantee full protection due to limits of input power, output leakage, recovery time and non linear behavior outside the defined bandwidth. In any case you cannot willy-nilly pump watts into these, things will still go up in smoke! You still need to attenuate and/or use a good quality sampler (see w2aew's videos on these topics, all of his videos are so excellent)
If you are so inclined, I can suggest starting with this and then search for all related videos


--
73 de ws1m
bammi

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