[Amps] Uruguay Amp Project

[Carl]

It sounds like she needs to make friends with someone in the US or another 
embassy.  That has been the import method of choice for many over the 
decades.

Carl
KM1H


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Patrick Barthelow" <apolloeme at live.com>
To: <amps at contesting.com>
Sent: Thursday, May 06, 2010 9:51 PM
Subject: [Amps] Uruguay Amp Project


>
> Folks,
>
> In the course of helping a YL build an amp in Uruguay, I am making 
> progress, but am amazed at the challeges faced by hams there, and probably 
> other small countries, who want to buy or build ham gear, particularly 
> amps.  I found an  insider representative in the Uruguay broadcast 
> tramsmitter industry who is looking for spare broadcast transmitter parts, 
> suitable for Amateur amps, such as tubes, transformers, power supply 
> parts, etc for this ham.
>
>
>
> He said, in the commercial TX world repairs or parts acquisition is 
> difficult and expensive, and a main vendor they rely on is Nebraska Radio 
> Sales.  OUCH(!)  NRS seems to have insanely high prices on QRO RF 
> components, at least to me they seem high.  To add insult to injury this 
> insider says every purchase, say for a $1000 vacuum variable, or say a 
> transformer has a $1000 (equal amount) dollar duty tacked on before he can 
> bring it in. OUCH!  Says there are a lot of solid state Broadcast TX 
> there, but also a lot of older tube transmitters, in the 1-10KW range as 
> spares, backups so I am hopeful to find the heavy parts for a power supply 
> there, to save money...In the olden days, here, the 4-400A was a common 
> find if you trolled radio station engineers for spares, probably not so 
> much any more.
>
> As to commercial ham gear I bet they also pay a super high tax on retail 
> gear brought in, so anyone in CX land on the air, has committed 
> considerable economic effort to do so.
>
>
>
> I wonder if this lady could find usable components in a junked 1KW 
> microwave oven for a power supply, diodes, or caps, transformer, etc?  The 
> last microwave oven that I took apart, had some hefty lookig HV diodes, 
> and what looked like a transistorized flyback style HV generator.   I will 
> have to look through arciived threads on the reflector here....
>
>
> Best Regards,
> 73, de Pat Barthelow AA6EG
>
>
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