[Elecraft] KPA1500 RELIABILITY

[Jim Brown]

Hi William,

Is the station using this amplifier operated in person, or remotely? If 
remotely, what operating conditions are being monitored by the remote 
operator?  What "traps" are provided by the control circuitry to prevent 
an operator from doing something dumb? This is one of the things I 
learned from a very good A/V contractor (K9IKZ was the chief engineer) 
whose programming team designed a lot of automation systems.

K5RC has reported reliability issues with power amps in the W7RN 
super-station, which is set up for remote operation. Don't recall which 
models, but I suspect Tom would be willing to share his experience. He 
did at the time on the NCCC reflector.

73, Jim K9YC

On 10/31/2022 1:40 PM, Dr. William J. Schmidt wrote:
> My KPA1500 just blew up for the third time... gonna go back again.  Forced
> us to run LP in CQWW this weekend as it exploded just two days ahead of the
> contest.  No reason for the explosion that I can tell... radio worked fine
> on the antenna system without the amp after the explosion.
> 
> Previously it went back for:
> 1.  MeanWell Power Supply failure.  (Hey, it happens).
> 2.  Blew up the blocking capacitors in the final output circuit (teeny
> suckers, no reason for it).
> 
> This time I got a hard failure/low gain so figure it's gonna be final
> transistors.  Thinking of going back to tube amps because they are much more
> forgiving!
>