[3830] All Asian CW VA2EW SOAB HP

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                    All Asian DX Contest, CW

Call: VA2EW
Operator(s): VA2EW
Station: VA2EW

Class: SOAB HP
QTH: QC
Operating Time (hrs): 30

Summary:
 Band  QSOs  Mults
-------------------
  160:           
   80:           
   40:           
   20:           
   15:           
   10:           
-------------------
Total:  576   246  Total Score = 141,696

Club: Contest Group du Quebec

Comments:

Interesting real time study of blackout conditions over North Pole versus NOAA
numbers.
For the records, my SPE 2KFA betrayed me Saturday at my best run moment on 15m
when I was at 80/h for an hour.
I replaced it by my 15 years old Yaesu VL-1000, all that at the cost of a 45mn
interruption at the best time of the contest which obviously cost me 30 to 50
QSO's plus the added difficulty to work multipliers with a reduced power.

Perhaps the Italian amp did not appreciate that I worked Asian only...

More seriously, it looks like while the amplifier was used in normal conditions
(Power, SWR, temperature,...) a simple CMS decoupling capacitor on one of the
six 400W parallel amplifiers gave up vaporizing itself while short-circuiting
the PCB starting an internal fire of the board, enough to start the room fire
detector.
It also looks like my amplifier is one of the first build and now SPE has
changed the capacitors used on its boards.
That does not prevent me from being furious for the lack of reliability after
only 2.5 years and at minimum, if a known problem was existing with the
capacitors a letter to consumers could have been sent.

By the way after 15 years of service my VL1000 is still 100% operational and
never failed, I just had a fuse to change two years ago. Too bad that Yaesu
never really made the VL2000.

Thanks to all the Asian stations for their calls

73's

Gilles VA2EW / VE2TZT


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