Component Body Colours

[KBG Luxford]

The discussion on the RF Choke Question prompts me to observe that not
only are component body colours apparently at the whim of the
manufacturer, but that some of the body colours chosen seem to make it
very hard to read the bands.  Is this band yellow or is it orange?  Or
is it brown?  Blue bodied 1% resistors I find especially difficult.

I have reached the point where before soldering I check all passive
components: resistors with a DMM, inductors and capacitors with AADE's
wonderful L/C Meter IIB Inductance/Capacitance Meter.

There was also some discussion about bending component leads.  The
little red plastic gizmo available from Milestone Technologies Morse
Express http://www.mtechnologies.com/tools/#bender is very easy to use
and ensures the component will slip into the holes for it on the PC
board with very little bother and stress on the component.

Usual disclaimers.

73
Kevin
VK3DAP / ZL2DAP
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[k6dgw]

Kevin Luxford wrote:
> The discussion on the RF Choke Question prompts me to observe that not
> only are component body colours apparently at the whim of the
> manufacturer, but that some of the body colours chosen seem to make it
> very hard to read the bands.  Is this band yellow or is it orange?  Or
> is it brown?  Blue bodied 1% resistors I find especially difficult.

Ever considered that you might be colorblind?  :-) Just kidding, but I
am a monochromie, although I didn't really know it until I got to
college.  I'd figured out I was having a hard time distinguishing the
color bands on the big molded caps and carbon resistors when I was a
teenage ham [they were much bigger then], but everyone (and I) just put
it off to bad light.

In the general population, the huge majority of color-challenged folk
will be male.  Very rare in females. Nearly all hams are male.  Go
figure, maybe God is not on our side? :-)   In a population of males,
the vast majority will have some sort of color vision defect, most
minor.  Most will be an inability to detect differences between two
specific colors, or differences between shades of one color [I'm quoting
the scientific literature here, I have no idea what this means, of
course].  Us monochromies make up maybe 1% of the male population and we
have it easy ... the world looks like old monochrome TV programs ... or
like the Windows default color scheme only without the color.  Since
that's all I've ever known, it looks pretty normal to me.  OTOH, I can
see at night far better than any of you can -- so there!

I truly appreciated the taped resistors for the K2.  I measured every
one, but I didn't have to hunt for each one.  The other color-coded
components [not many] were tagged by my wife, who has perfect color
vision.  The rest had the smallest numbers you can imagine on them, but
no colors that mattered.

Fred K6DGW
Auburn CA CM98lw
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[John Lonigro]

I too am colorblind (red-green) and have always had trouble reading
resistor values.  In the "good old days", reading the colors was
difficult, but the XYL (or my mother when I was younger) was usually
around to help.  They would tell me a 33K resistor was "brown, orange,
brown, orange, brown, orange, brown, silver (hi).  Nowadays, I can't ask
the XYL anymore because, while she can still see colors perfectly, her
visual acuity has gotten worse, as has mine.  They may have large print
books, but I haven't seen many "large print" resistors these days (1/2
-2 Watt).  I too thank Elecraft for presorting the resistors.  It saved
me lots of time and possibly a mistake or two.

John AA0VE

Fred Jensen wrote:
>
> Ever considered that you might be colorblind?  :-) Just kidding, but I
> am a monochromie, although I didn't really know it until I got to
> college.  I'd figured out I was having a hard time distinguishing the
> color bands on the big molded caps and carbon resistors when I was a
> teenage ham [they were much bigger then], but everyone (and I) just
> put it off to bad light.
>
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