The way I heard it, maybe from Paul, is that Fred advanced the up front
money for Viewstar.
With a change in the Pi-L the 2500 bandswitch arcing problems and padding
cap failures went away. The variable caps were wide spaced to compensate but
instead the switch arced and that was a PITA to work on!
After the fix the station won a CQ 160M contest using both amps with one TX
feeding both. One to a 160' high Inverted V and the other to phased
verticals. All legal at 1500W total. Later they helped win a couple of all
band contests using 2 stations and single op.
Carl
KM1H
> Carl:
> Viewstar was not Hammond but rather was owned by Paul Hivrniak (most
> likely mispelled his name here but he owns Palstar now) who had used some
> of the dyes from Fred Hammond to make the tuning and loading capacitors
> and the transformers were made by Hammond. I have an offshoot of that
> particular amplifier called the Viewstar PT-3000A(same cabinet as the more
> common PT-2500A) which was 1 of 5 built using the 8877 tubes. I've had no
> issues with the pi-L network except for a padder ceramic cap using in the
> plate tuning which affects both 75 and 160 meters and the ceramic padding
> cap used in the loading circuit on 160 meters.
> 73 from Fern VE7GZ
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Carl" <km1h@jeremy.mv.com>
> To: <Gary@ka1j.com>; <Amps@contesting.com>
> Sent: Tuesday, March 23, 2010 2:07 PM
> Subject: Re: [Amps] B&W PT-2500A HF Amplifier
>
>
>> Viewstar was Hammond and since they couldnt crack the US market they
>> approached B&W.
>>
>> The Pi-L tank had a few problems causing lots of smoke and that was
>> redone.
>> Its the best of the 3-500 amps but its high price limited sales and it
>> was
>> discontinued.
>>
>> Carl
>> KM1H
>>
>>
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