[Amps] R. MEASURES PRAYERS ANSWERED

W7RY w7ry at centurytel.net
Sat Jun 3 13:48:36 EDT 2006


I sure wish Good Guy Ham would sign his emails... (That is just common
courtesy). It sure would be nice to know who he is.

The main issue with SB-220 band switches is because of the front panel
layout, the band switch gets turned instead of the loading control when
in tune-up mode.


The very late SB-220s and HL-2200s had longer tune caps. Or Heathkit
made them available on a replacement basis. I have seen several SB-220s
with them.

73
Jim W7RY


-----Original Message-----
From: amps-bounces at contesting.com [mailto:amps-bounces at contesting.com]
On Behalf Of Gudguyham at aol.com
Sent: Saturday, June 03, 2006 10:42 AM
To: r at somis.org; n4zr at contesting.com
Cc: craxd1 at verizon.net; amps at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [Amps] R. MEASURES PRAYERS ANSWERED

In a message dated 6/2/2006 5:47:24 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
r at somis.org  
writes:

Finally,  there were some changes made during the SB-220 production  
> run  that may have affected stability; one I have heard of is that  
>  the spacing of the tuning capacitor was increased to prevent  
>  arcing,
It is NOT my experience that this was ever done.  Every SB-220 I have
ever 
seen from one of the earliest to the latest always had the same plate
tune  
variable cap, however they did change the loading cap somewhere along
the  line.  
Perhaps this is what you meant?
 
Speaking of the SB-220 bandswitch.  It always seemed to me that the
contacts 
on these switches were marginal at best for a 1 KW output amplifier,
however 
I do believe that Heath designed it as 1KW DC input amplifier (legal
limit 
at the time).  That said, the manual tune up instructions only called
for a 
maximum of about 500 mills of plate current.  So at best the output
would be 
about 500-600watts.  At this rating the contacts may be OK,  however we
all know 
and the reports from others here on the reflector tout their  SB-220's
going 
1200-1500 watts output.  That is 2 times the amount Heath  called for 
(according to their loading instructions).  Since I have  autopsied
dozens of SB-220's 
I have found at least  80% of them had one or  more badly burned
contacts.  
That's 8 out of 10.  Since the SB-220 has  redundant contacts, many amps
still 
worked on the bands that had a bad contacts,  but the slightest mishap
in 
loading (ie too much drive out of resonance) would  result in a nice arc
at the 
contact since the current capacity of the contact  was now 1/2 what it
was.
 
It is very difficult to examine both sets of contacts on an SB-220 to
see  if 
they are 100%.  One really needs a small mirror like a dentist uses to
see 
the contacts and check them for burns.  I'll bet that alot of you out
there 
who have SB-220's that were bought used probably have a contact that is

somewhat compromised and does not really know it.  In the same time
period  there 
where other brands of amps using 3-500's which had MUCH heavier
bandswitch  
contacts.  I have worked with many of those amps too.  The likelyhood
of a burned 
bandswitch contact was near ziltch on them.  It is obvious that  many
run the 
Sb-220 to 800 to 1000 mils of plate current.  In order to  report
outputs of 
1200-1500 watts this is surely the case.  The contacts  are simply too
wimpy 
for that kind of current, especially on the higher bands,  which by the
way were 
the contacts that were burned.  Most of the time it  was the 10 meter 
contacts that were burned (or totally gone!) then the 15 meter  or both.
Rarely did 
I ever see a bad 80-40-20 meter  contact.
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