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Re: [Amps] TUNER

To: amps@contesting.com
Subject: Re: [Amps] TUNER
From: Ian White GM3SEK <gm3sek@ifwtech.co.uk>
Reply-to: Ian White GM3SEK <gm3sek@ifwtech.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 14 Oct 2010 12:14:20 +0100
List-post: <amps@contesting.com">mailto:amps@contesting.com>
Jim Thomson wrote:
>
>EXCEPT when you get to the higher bands. (10 and 15. And sometimes 20). 
>You need a way to cancel out the reactance. At least you do on a pair 
>of 4CX800 Russian tetrodes.
>
>73
>Jim W7RY
>
>### agreed.  Alpha achieves that by switching in  a tiny bit of uh   in 
>parallel  with the  grid to chassis resistor. ## On these 8170/8171 
>tetrodes,  they use a small roller inductor in parallel with the 450 
>ohm resistor.   That cancels out the XC  from the  C between  control 
>grid and cathode. If you don't do this,,, you will have SWR on the 
>input, between xcvr and input of amp.
>
>Jim  VE7RF

This is surprising, because the reactance of the input capacitance can 
be cancelled without any switching, by "absorbing" it into a 1:1 pi 
network with C1 equal to the shunt capacitance of the tubes. Physically, 
it looks like an L network because C2 is inside the tubes, but 
electrically it behaves as a pi.

The network compensates for the effects of input capacitance on the 
higher bands, and being a lowpass configuration, it becomes increasingly 
"transparent" on the lower bands with no switching required.

Jim Tonne's ELSIE program is a good way to design the network. It isn't 
very intuitive, so here are a few pointers...

 From the "Design" dialog, choose Capacitor-input lowpass, Chebyshev, 
Bandwidth = 50M (ie 50MHz - trust me, this is a good starting value for 
HF), Order = 3, Rs = 50, Ap = 0.5.

Then click "Edit" on the top menu. This opens a schematic for the 
pi-network that you have specified, with editable component values at 
upper left. Click on item 3 (output capacitor) and change it to equal 
the input capacitance of the tube(s), including a few pF for strays. 
Don't forget to include the units of pF! Click on item 1 (input 
capacitor) and change it to the same value.

Now click "Plot" on the top menu, and choose the "Transmission + VSWR" 
plot option (6th from the top). You should now be seeing a reasonably 
flat VSWR curve, up to at least 30MHz.

To flatten it even more, click "Tune Part". This opens a popup window 
where you can click "Next Part" to select the series inductor, and set 
the Stepsize to say 10%. You can now use "Increase" or "Decrease" to 
flatten the VSWR curve across the whole HF range.


(Damn - I really didn't mean to provide detailed instructions. These 
technical writing habits are hard to shake   :-)




-- 

73 from Ian GM3SEK
http://www.ifwtech.co.uk/g3sek
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