[Amps] Life of tubes in ham service

[John Lyles]

Actually it was RCA who made the pink ceramic insulators. It was 
Frenchtown ceramic, and the material came from mines in NJ. A trace of 
chromium gave it the good characteristics over plain alumina ceramic. It 
was very strong and had excellent dielectric characteristics for high 
frequencies. Later, they moved to bone white ceramic, from Morgan. Other 
companies like Coors and Kyocera were available and sometimes used as 
well. Burle Industries was the company that bought RCA's high power tube 
production in Lancaster, PA. (Mr. Burlefinger was a former RCA manager). 
In more recent years, Photonis (of France) owns the company. We still 
have one RF system at work running with Photonis/Burle/RCA tubes, but no 
pink ones anymore.

Svetlana had a similar ceramic, which was a little more purple than 
Frenchtown pink, but had great performance as well.
73
John
K5PRO


> Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2017 20:46:57 -0600
> From: "Jim W7RY" <jimw7ry at gmail.com>
> To: "Alek Petkovic" <vk6apk at bigpond.com>
> Cc: "AMPS" <amps at contesting.com>
> Subject: Re: [Amps] Life of tubes in ham service

> They were probably Burle brand? They were famous for pink ceramic. RCA made
> a few too.
> 73
> Jim W7RY