I had this in storage and after a year I realise the 3.5mm 25 ohms airline has some spots on the end, see picture. The gold has deteriorated, it feels smooth to the touch but it has spots, is it useless? can it be tested by itself. Since I have all the data disks can a replace it with another one and use the same data disks?
It finnaly passed everything on a 6GHz PNA.
Despite having the airline like that, would that have an effect at verification of a higher frequency VNA?
was the airline stored in the black foam? If so it might be the foam deteriorated. I've seen that on some kits as they age (like greater than 10 years old). If it is staining, did you try to clean (e.g. with Isopropyl Alcohol)?.
If it is truely detrioration of the gold, it might have some effect, but if it is external staining, I doubt it would affect the results even at low mm-wave frequencies.
Dr_Joel it was stored in good foam and inside its plastic cover closed, I tried with Regular Alcohol and Isopropyl and stays the same. They are not stains as I said it is smooth to the touch, but I think is the gold plated deteroration. I took an image under 20X microscope. What is the reason they use gold is it for conductivity or for protection? The other airline the 50 ohms is in excellent shape.
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Device 4 Now it fails all the time in S11 magnitude and S22 magnitude I tried 3 times all fail on that. Can I just replaced by another and use the same data disk or I need to get new data disk?