[NLRS] TE1410G 2m Amp - Chapter two

[W0ZQ at aol.com]

You may recall that I mentioned in a previous  email that my TE1410G 2m amp 
was drawing excessive current.  I had bought  this amp some time ago, I think 
at a hamfest, but not sure.  Anyway, I  popped the cover on it for the first 
time to take a look. 

My first  question of "why isn't this thing blowing fuses" was address after 
looking  at the unit for about one minute or so .... the fuse had been 
internally  jumpered, or bypassed, by someone !  Yikes.  Well, that explains why  the 
fuse wasn't blowing ... it was in full combat power mode.  Someone had  been 
inside here before me.  

This was Tuesday night just ahead of  coffee, so I grabbed the amp and took 
it with me to see if the boy's could spot  anything else wrong with it ... 
there was no obvious signs of carbon or  excessive heat.   Donn, WA2VOI, spotted a 
capacitor that was not  soldered, and when I got home and looked under a good 
light, I found two more  passive devices with cold solder joints ... one of 
them on the bias side.   So I added some heat and solder to those three devices 
and gave it a good visual  inspection .... everything else looked ok.  I 
hooked it all up on the bench  and, what da ya know, it all worked as it should.

However, I had noticed  that my FT897 didn't like loading into it and 
checking the input SWR with the  amp on, I found the SWR was about 5:1.  I tweaked 
the input tuning cap and  got it down to about 3.5:1, but it should be better 
... what gives.  During  inspection I had noticed that someone had jumpered the 
input tuning line making  it much shorter.  The amp's PCB looked like maybe it 
could be used for  several different bands, or freq's, but it looked strange 
to have the input  tuning jumpered so short on 2m.  I removed the jumper, 
retuned the input  cap, and found a nice 1:1 match.  Why had someone put in a 
jumper there  ??  

So, with the input tuned for minimum SWR and the output tuned  for maximum 
suds, its all working per spec.  2 watts in gives me 55 watt  out at about 12 
amps.   4 watts in gives 120 watts out at about 21  amps.  It goes into 
compression with about 8 watts of drive with 150 watts  out at about 28 amps.  I think 
my output power meter is a little Scotch, so  these numbers may be a little 
low.  

Happy camper, end of  story.  Thanks to all who gave me some suggestions as 
to what to look  for.

73, Jon
W0ZQ  

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