Re: gEDA-user: Contact reliability

[Bob Paddock <bpaddock@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wednesday 19 January 2005 03:40 pm, Karel Kulhavy wrote:

> We tried it. I don't know whether it was high-quality. The inner pin was
> gold-plated, the outer shell silver-plated probably. It failed despite not
> being directly on weather. It was deep in a horizontal plastic pipe where
> rain couldn't in, but humidity and temperature could. It failed after 1.5
> years.

I once saw a large amount of water pour out of  a 7/8" inch hardline (large 
coax)  that had worked its way up two stores by capillary action, when the
connector was removed from the transmitter.  The water would be frailly pure,
high dielectric constant, so it usually does not effect the signal integrity.
The problem usually comes in if there is some breach to air exposure that 
makes things  corrode.