I recently bought a couple of Alpha Delta coaxial switches, and noticed they come with a built-in surge arrester which can be replaced after a surge. They call them “Arc-Plugs”. These are on sale at DX Engineering for $9.99 each. I thought that was a little steep.
When the switches arrived, I took at look to verify what these were, looking for part numbers, etc, and discovered they are actually Littelfuse CG21000 gas discharge tube surge arresters. These are a common component often use in telecommunications and other surge-prone areas of electronics.
These can be found online at Mouser or Digikey for around $2.99. All you would need to do would be to order the leaded variant, snip off the leads with a pair of cutters, and you’re good to go. After all, that’s what it looks like Alpha Delta are doing too.
https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Littelfuse/CG21000?qs=ZSIFh4sPSRroCBB0umQcMg%3D%3D
I don’t know about you, but I like cheaper.
If you would like to know more about how these surge arresters work, check out this detailed PDF from Bourns:
Thanks to N5UWY for setting me off on this curiosity!
I’ve used A-D TransiTraps as long as I’ve had antennas outdoors. What I’m more interested in is how you would ever know that these are “bad” or “used up”. Do they fail-safe? If they do, would my antennas be, essentially, grounded?
Well, you piqued my curiosity – I had to go and find out. Check out the PDF that I attached to the post. Page 21 starts to talk about the life cycle of these devices. Cheers!