[Johnson] RE: Viking II numbers

[Laird Tom N]

I too, always heard that the Viking II is a little light on modulation.
When I had mine, I ran between 90 and 95 watts of carrier. Also, I heard
that most Johnson meters tend to go out of calibration with age. But the
great part is that they are built like a tank!

Tom Laird W9QI
Moline, IL.
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I have a really nice Viking II that i put new finals in the other day to
see if it helped any. I get about 100W out of it on CW with it loaded to
200 mc of Ip. As the manual i have is not complete and doesn't tell me
what the proper conditions are Ip wise for CW and Phone, i'm thinking
that this is about right. But, a friend of mine over in California says
his CD says to run it to 300 ma Ip for CW. I thought that was high? 
But again if i load mine up to 300 Ma Ip i get 135W out of it as
measured with the Bird wattmeter and a 250W slug. Turning the inputs and
outputs around makes no difference so i have to think the slug is
correct. My question is what is the correct Ip for Cw and Phone on the
Viking II.

I remember a couple of years back an article published in ER magazine
stated something like only run it at about 85W or so on phone because
the mod transformer wouldn't modulate the carrier properly if you run it
at higher power.  I've done no mods to this unit other than replace the
Electrolytics. I think the idling Ip for the modulator is 65-75 ma. Is
this correct. I'd really like to find a complete manual for this unit as
it's at least a 9 or better cosmetically and is fun to operate. Read
lots of knobs to twist and turn!

Larry W0OGH