[Amps] Econco closing

[John Lyles]

In the 1990s, Econco tried to rebuild a Machlett LPT44, a 150 kV glass 
switch tube (triode) for us. It came back a bit lopsided, but we tried 
running it, and all I remember is the technician at our klystron test 
bench said come see the gold fish tank. They raised the tube up out of 
the oil tank, and the entire tube was full of oil! That ended attempts 
to rebuild these particular big glass tubes. Brookhaven National Lab had 
more success rebuilding some ITT/Federal glass/metal switch tubes and 
depended on Econco for decades to keep their Continental HV modulators 
going. I am not sure what they are planning to do about it now, although 
Fermilab had similar tubes and discontinued using that piece of 
equipment, so its possible their old tubes and spares went to BNL if 
they were same type.

For all who say tubes are dead, that CPI (now MPP) is going to go the 
way of the dinosaur, you need to realize that they are not doing that as 
they have a significant military and scientific market that isn't able 
to just buy a solid state transmitter. Consider the HAARP site in 
Gakona, Alaska. They have about 90 transmitters, each one with a push 
pull pair of 4CW10,000D. Consider Fermilab's main injector ring, uses a 
large quantity of a special version of the 4CW150,000E. That machine is 
not going away, in fact there is a significant upgrade called PIPII that 
will replace their linac from Photonis/Burle tubes to solid state but 
their ring will continue with tubes. I was in a design review last week 
with Brookhaven National Lab, which has just shut down their 
Relativistic Heavy Ion collider after 20+ years of use, and is designing 
replacement with EIC, the electron ion collider. It has significant new 
RF power at 24, 49, 98, 197 and 591 MHz, both tube and SS amplifier 
systems. The tubes are 4CW150,000E and RS2058 tetrodes. GSI in Germany 
is building FAIR and their synchrotrons also use big tubes, TH555A and 
others. Michigan State's FRIB machine uses the TH555A and TH781 
tetrodes. We (LANL) use TH555A tetrodes, TH781 tetrodes, and TH628L 
Diacrodes and are investing in a major upgrade that will replace some 
accelerating hardware but continue to use the RF power plants that I 
have worked on for 34 years. None of these machines are shutting down, 
as governments and academia continue to invest in their science. Most 
facilities are tooling up for the long haul, 20-30 years into the 
future. They would not be doing this if MPP and Thales were hanging on 
by a thread in the RF tube business.

So the loss of ham market, the loss of broadcast (don't forget the rest 
of the world cannot always afford to buy a Nautel FM rig just to reduce 
operating cost), does not mean that tube companies have a reason to 
close up. I didn't mention military as I have less knowledge of it, but 
I know there are a lot of special tubes there also, and they cannot be 
designed out of equipment as it must continue running 24/7.

Also, a slight detour from this tube talk:

"FM broadcast  went  SS back in the mid 70's.     AM broadcast went SS in
the late 70's.    The later broadcast PA's  that went SS,  there was and
still is  NO market for used tube broadcast  PA's.   The tube Pa's went
straight to the landfill ...... including tubes."

Broadcast FM didn't really have reliable SS rigs until DMOS and later 
LDMOS were available. In the 1970s the biggest bipolar junction 
transistors for 100 MHz CW were about 150 watts/300 watts PP. NHK, the 
Japanese broadcast company, used early Hitachi DMOS transistors in a 
complete 10 kW FM rig, in a paper presented at a IEEE broadcast 
symposium in Washington DC in 1980. I was there. This was what 
kickstarted Harris, Broadcast Electronics, Continental, Larcan, R&S, 
Seimens, and other manufacturers to adopt DMOS parts from Motorola at 
the time, derivatives of the MRF150 and push pull MRF151G. Those 151G 
are the closest thing to 6146, as they continue to be made in quantities 
by several companies (for science and broadcast). But to get beyond 600 
watts (MRF154) it took LDMOS, again from Motorola, and now they and 
Ampleon make 1.8 kW PP parts for class C. Burle Industries in Lancaster, 
formerly the huge 1 million ft^2 RCA tube factory, is still in business. 
They were bought by Photonis in France years ago, and continue to build 
some tubes, for science and industry, but very little broadcast market 
since they never penetrated the AM/FM transmitter business like Eimac 
did in the 1980s. One of their very special tubes is the Coaxitron, a 
wideband device with multiple tubes cascaded inside one vacuum 
enclosure. These were in AWACs and some may still be supplied in the 
foreign market, whereas the US planes are likely SS now. Photonis 
supplies big tetrodes and triodes to Brookhaven for linac RF amplifiers 
at 200 MHz.

From: David Gow<6146guy at gmail.com>
"Does Burle still exist?  I can't find it on the web and supposedly NOS
Burle 8122s are for sale from India.  Maxgain says they are out of stock.
I have a NCL-2000 on the shelf, the tubes are weak so I wonder if it is now
a door stop.  My Henry 3KD is working well with Chinese 3-500s  but the
National ishure s pretty."
Dave W7VM

Burle Industries in Lancaster, formerly the huge 1 million ft^2 RCA tube 
factory, is still in business. They were bought by Photonis in France 
years ago, and continue to build some tubes, for science and industry, 
but very little broadcast market since they never penetrated the AM/FM 
transmitter business like Eimac did in the 1980s. One of their very 
special tubes is the Coaxitron, a wideband device with multiple tubes 
cascaded inside one vacuum enclosure. These were in AWACs and some may 
still be supplied in the foreign market, whereas the US planes are 
likely SS now. Photonis supplies big tetrodes and triodes to Brookhaven 
for linac RF amplifiers at 200 MHz. 73 John K5PRO