The AM Forum
March 29, 2024, 11:48:59 AM *
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
 
   Home   Help Calendar Links Staff List Gallery Login Register  
Pages: [1]   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: More broken parts!  (Read 3117 times)
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.
W2VW
Contributing
Member
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 3489


WWW
« on: August 28, 2005, 10:11:40 AM »

Decided to make use of the K3L antenna tuner to keep the dust away and make it easier to change bands. Made a DPST switch out of an old 50 Amp knife electrical disconnect. Hooked the open wire line to the common, the K3L tuner to one side and my existing station tuner to the other side. Both tuner inputs can be selected using the garden variety coax switch (that's cow-axe if you live near Phila.). Made it through the week on 75 no problem. One tuner set for 40 and one for 75. QSY time cut way down. Yesterday afternoon set the existing tuner up for 160 which required fabrication of a new fixed parallel coil to replace the roller inductor robbed for the K3L tuner. That went a little too well. I actually managed to guess the correct tap on the first try! System now delliveres 16 R.F. Amperes into feeders at legal limit power out (antenna proper is only 120' long dipole). Whoopie! Back across the basement to check a few more things. Left the thing on the air for 5 minutes at 1000 Watts steady carrier while writing settings down. Noticed a 5% power drift. Bad sign. The amp which is in use here never drifts. Shut everything down. Back over to the Northeast side of the dungeon where the tuners live. Something smells a little warm. What is it? Hmmmm? Can't tell. Just know it's not the Xyl making dinner 'cause she isn't home.

Here is what was cooking. Guess the insulator block is lossy at R.F. after all. Even though it survived the test on 40 metres.



* cooked knifeswitch.JPG (137.44 KB, 617x300 - viewed 515 times.)
Logged
KE1GF
Guest
« Reply #1 on: August 28, 2005, 12:20:55 PM »

Guess so dave, is all hope lost or can she be rebuilt with a teflon or thick lexan plenum?
Logged
W2VW
Contributing
Member
*
Offline Offline

Posts: 3489


WWW
« Reply #2 on: August 28, 2005, 12:59:50 PM »

Considering Plexiglass. I'm too cheap for Teflon.
Logged
Pages: [1]   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

AMfone - Dedicated to Amplitude Modulation on the Amateur Radio Bands
 AMfone © 2001-2015
Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines
Page created in 0.065 seconds with 18 queries.