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[AMPS] Zener screen supplies

To: <amps@contesting.com>
Subject: [AMPS] Zener screen supplies
From: Ian White, G3SEK" <g3sek@ifwtech.com (Ian White, G3SEK)
Date: Tue, 17 Apr 2001 11:23:22 +0100
Peter Chadwick wrote:
>
>How long does the excess voltage have to exist across the in-socket 
>capacitor before it goes? Intuitively, nanoseconds seems unlikely (and 
>across 1000pF or so, it takes a lot of doing to get nanosecond rise 
>times) while tens of milliseconds appears pretty certain to cause 
>breakdown.
>
Assuming that the arc strikes extremely rapidly, the rise time is going
to be of the order of RC, where R is the glitch resistor and C is the
bypass capacitance. That comes out to a few tens of nanoseconds.

>
>Another way of using the SCR is to have a somewhat larger sense 
>resistance in the zener string, a resistance in series with the gate, 
>and a capacitor between gate and anode. This allows the rapidly rising 
>anode voltage to pull the gate positive, before the zener current has 
>increased very far. Of course, SCRs can turn on with no gate drive at 
>all if the dV/dt of the voltage applied across anode - cathode is high 
>enough.
>
That raises the interesting question of how to turn the screen supply
on... 

73 from Ian G3SEK          Editor, 'The VHF/UHF DX Book'
                          'In Practice' columnist for RadCom (RSGB)
                           http://www.ifwtech.com/g3sek

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