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Re: Topband: SB-1000

To: "Jim Murray" <adkmurray@yahoo.com>, <topband@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: Topband: SB-1000
From: "Tom W8JI" <w8ji@w8ji.com>
Reply-to: Tom W8JI <w8ji@w8ji.com>
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 2015 21:34:06 -0500
List-post: <topband@contesting.com">mailto:topband@contesting.com>

Both are N750 types. You need a #6 lug, a short #6 screw (3/16th long), and
some #16 bus wire plus a brass washer that Ameritron will have. The chokes
come from Ameritron no matter where you buy them.

Thanks Tom,Re. the lug, screw and wire, I'm assuming the capacitor I ordered from them will install with the lug, screw and wire that already exists? Didn't realize they had the washer also but will give them a call, possibly they can include it in the order. I did get the choke from them also. I also got one of F1BXL's parasitic suppressors he sells on Ebay. Hopefully all this will calm things down a little. The knowledge generously shared by folks like yourself, Jim and others on their web pages and this forum are greatly appreciated by all. Have a good Christmas and New Years to all.
Jimk2hn


I don't know who F1BXL is, but parasitics have nothing to do with anything. I would not go sticking hairpins in there. That stuff is all heebie-jeebie voo doo.

The 160 tab is under the most stress when the amp operates 80 meters. There is almost 3kV peak across that 160 plate padding terminal to the switch rotor. Every amplifier that switches a plate padding cap in has highest peak voltage on that tab when on 80 meters.

To reduce the electric field gradient around all the pointed areas of the contact, a washer is used. The washer acts just like one of those anti-corona rings that used to be in TV sets, or that you see on HV power lines. It spreads the field out, and reduces the chances of the corona setting off an arc when you are on 80 meters.

Voltage between the switch rotor and that contact is highly dependent on how you set the load control, because that sets the anode impedance. This is why people should **always** tune an amplifier up for maximum possible power at full drive and then back drive off to safe power. That reduces peak voltage.

I can, for example, make the anode of a 3-500Z reach 3 or more times the dc supply voltage if I underload the amp. As a matter of fact if it is severely underloaded, the voltage increases until something someplace absorbs the energy. If it is a switch contact, then the contact goes away.

People can cast all the spells they want with magical suppressors and, if the PA gets grossly underloaded for the peak drive power, something will arc. That is just how these class AB amplifier systems work.

Ask Ameritron to include the parts. They do not normally come with the capacitor. When I released the SB1000 design to Heath, the release was real early in the run. I think we were at the first 100 or 200 AL80A's. That washer, plus a buck-boost winding to the transformer, came after Heath kitted the unit. What you have is a very early release of the AL80A, just after the AL80 was dropped. The AL80A was progressively refined until it couldn't be refined any more in that chassis. The next major revision was the AL80B, which had major changes. The AL80B remains pretty much unchanged.

73 Tom
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