I get almost 13db gain at 4.2KV, zero bias, when lightly loaded for 100 watts drive.  Saves on heating bill. 

That's a good point.

Bill,

Good luck with that G50 project, I thought about doing the same to my G50 but quickly dismissed the thought when I looked at what would be involved. One thing I wish was provided on the G50 is an extra set of contacts for T/R. I wanted this to turn on and off an external VFO. I am not sure if you have ever checked the TX VFO drift on your G50, but it is terrible on mine, greater than 25KHz in the first hour of warm-up from initial turn-on. You can literally blow on the TX VFO tuning cap and it will drift a few KHz and then come right back. I am not sure if this is normal for the G50 but if you can check it out on yours I would be curious to know if it behaves in the same way. So I am rock bound for now but if I had an extra set of contacts on that T/R switch I could key an external stable solid state VFO.

Mark WA1QHQ

Let the airing of grievances begin. Then afterwards, I will base load the aluminum pole!

Yes, you missed the upgrade announcement.

AMfone hosting services are now "Over-Powered" by AI.  IT now has a mind of its own.  IT does what IT wants, when IT wants to.  Homo Sapiens no longer in control.

AI "thought" we would all appreciate a bit of intermittent entertainment, and "he" got caught up in a bit of "tongue in cheek" humor..

Now you are ALL informed.  Any questions?  (Even the bots are unimpressed)

I have more problems with you than you have with me, OM.

My Festivus Pole is 36 feet in elevation, how high is yours?

There's a Hum-Bug at the top of mine, totally ruining reception AND transmission.

There is no known way to eradicate a hum bug.  

You are probably doing better with your ten-metre laundry doublet!

Yes, another year has gone by, and it's Festivus Time again.

Disappointed reigns ! !

I've got a lot of problems with youse all.

KLC

   My bench is clean? Well, that's a fleeting moment in time; a very temporary state. It's never that way for long! As far as other G-50 mods, I did very briefly consider, and fortunately put out of my mind (because I'd have to be out of my mind to do it), replacing the Heising choke with a real mod transformer and reconnecting the two 6L6's in push pull, for traditional plate modulation. It would sound a bit better, and easily achieve 100% modulation. But, it would pretty much amount to federal highway project level drilling and blasting, and almost certainly not worth it. I've got suitable mod transformers, but in addition to completely rewiring the 6L6's, I would need to either put in a driver transformer or kludge up a phase inverter. Now, if it were a total basket-case G-50, I might consider it, but I'd have a hard time justifying hacking up a good one.
   Actually, if I really wanted to make my G-50 sound better, I could externally modulate it with the external modulator I use with "Ugly Betty." Now there's a thought!

Better propagation at night???

Klc

   Hi, Larry! Yes, I think we were talking about it at the Museum a few weeks ago. Everything's coming along well; all the wires have been traced out and marked, and some original (and some not so original) terminal strips and such have been moved around to make more comfortable room for the relay board.
   Since I solid-stated the high voltage supply, I don't need the 5-volt winding of the transformer to run the filaments of the rectifier tubes, so I'm rectifying that 5 volts to power the coils of the six relays instead. The current drawn by those relay coils totals over half an amp, and rather than have my microphone PTT contacts handling that current, I'm using a PNP power transistor to do the dirty work, so the microphone contacts only see the few milliamps of base current for the transistor.
   The only issue that might pop up is that the B+ voltage is a bit higher than the Omron relays are rated for, but I tested them on the bench first with a high-voltage supply at well above what they'll be seeing, and they worked fine.