A number of years ago I had the pleasure of corresponding with an elderly
amateur in California by the name of Joe Funderburg.
Joe was the smartest person I ever had a chance to talk to about amplifier
theory.
I cannot remember his call letters but know that he and another amateur,
(whose call letters I cannot remember either) but I believe it may have been
William Orr, went through all this more than 10 or 15 years ago when they
sliced open a number of 8877s and found the problem with the 'sputtering'
that contaminated the cathodes on those early 8877s (and got the amateurs a
bunch of free replacements from EIMAC).
I also believe they wrote an article about it that appeared in QST.
I do not have any more details on the subject because we were QSO'ing about
another area of high power amplifier design at the time and this was an
'oh-by-the-way' type of conversation we had.
Unfortunately, when Lucent technologies 'force reduction retired' me on
November 15th after 37 years of service, they only gave me about 3 hours to
clear out my many years worth of accumulated 'stuff' and I did not have the
time to retrieve my email archives; so those details were lost forever.
But if Joe or his friend are still around, and someone out there knows them
and can contact them, they may be of some help in resolving this issue.
Regards,
Dennis O.
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