Thanks everybody for your help, I spent more time looking into the phenomenon and essentially water has really interesting properties to stop oscillations, relatively high Er and incredibly high Tan(d). It is actually the combination of the 2 that create enough losses to overcome the negative resistance of the circuit. And NO this is not a permanent fix, there is already a "real fix" in place for the next version but as you know reworking an IC takes more then a solder iron...:-) Thanks again Roger ------------------------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe from si-list: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field or to administer your membership from a web page, go to: //www.freelists.org/webpage/si-list For help: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'help' in the Subject field List technical documents are available at: http://www.si-list.net List archives are viewable at: //www.freelists.org/archives/si-list or at our remote archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/si-list/messages Old (prior to June 6, 2001) list archives are viewable at: http://www.qsl.net/wb6tpu