[Amps] AL-80A troubleshooting

[Kent Miller]

A ham friend of mine asked me to troubleshoot his newly acquired  but
inoperative AL-80A amp. yesterday.  The first problem I found was the
antenna relay had been hit by something, knocked out of position and
bending the contacts.

This was relatively easy to fix, but after that, a continued visual
inspection revealed that 2 of the 3 wafers of the band switch had
several vaporized contacts. My next step will be to replace the
bandswitch, but now I am beginning to wonder if there may be a high
probability of other problems present that caused the extreme arcing of
the bandswitch. I have looked in the archives and see the info about vhf
parasitics as a potential problem, but are there other known problems
that I should look for ?

Also, is the bandswitch in the AL-80B interchangeable with the AL-80A
and are they still available from Ameritron ?

Any advice ?

Thanks, 73,
Kent - K4MK