[Johnson] DO NOT Solid State the Power Supply in your Ranger!!

[Sherrill Watkins]

Dear Glenn: You are fortunate indeed. My Drake TR-4C will damage some of its
tubes in about 18 months; based about two or three on-off cycles per day. I
have quit using it because of its tendency to damage tubes so quickly. I plan
to install a time-delay relay in the center tap groud of the power supply to
allow the filiments to warm properly before the B+ is applied before I use it
again. My high AC line voltage (125vac!) doesent help matters. -73- Sherrill
W. k4own.   

-----Original Message-----
From: Glen Zook [mailto:gzook at yahoo.com] 
Sent: Monday, October 18, 2004 4:20 PM
To: Sherrill Watkins; Ross Stenberg; Johnson at Mailman. Qth. Net
Subject: Re: [Johnson] DO NOT Solid State the Power Supply in your Ranger!! 


All of the Heath SB-Line which is tube type design
have solid-state power supplies and there are no
problems with them!

I have almost all of the original tubes in my Heath
SB-110A transceiver and the HP-23 power supply is
definitely solid-state.  That rig is over 30 years old
and is still going strong on 6 meter SSB.  Both the B+
and B++ are applied when the rig is turned on.

The same thing with my Heath SB-301 and SB-401.  The
internal power supplies are solid-state.  The old RCA commercial two-way FM
units used the rapid heating tubes on transmit (the filaments had to go from
off to on before transmitting) and the high voltage was applied to the plates
immediately.  Again, no problems!

The Collins PM-2 power supply that was designed to use
with the KWM-2 series is solid-state.  Again, no
problems.

And so on.  The main things that are affected are the capacitors that may get
a "burst" of higher voltage than they were designed for.  But, as for tube
damage I have never seen any.

Glen, K9STH


--- Sherrill Watkins
<Sherrill.Watkins at dgs.virginia.gov> wrote:

Dear Ross: Consider yourself lucky! My Drake TR-4C has
solid state power supply and will seriously weaken
many of the tubes in about 12 to 18 months. Of course,
the number of on-off cycle times has a lot to do with this.

=====
Glen, K9STH

Web sites

http://home.comcast.net/~k9sth
http://home.comcast.net/~zcomco

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com