Hi Chuck, I looked at your photos (nice work!) and it appears that you are using a piece of Airdux with perhaps #12 size conductor. That is a mite small for 20 meters. I'd suggest upsizing the 20 meter section of the coil to at least 1/8" (#8) or even 5/16" diameter. The load padding capacitor as noted by several others is the wrong type for this application. A few options: 1. Change the load vacuum cap to 1400pF and eschew the padder. 2. Use a better quality padder. A Jennings JSLF-450 or Several Centralab (or equiv.) 850 series ceramic NPO's in parallel or An air fixed capacitor -- or perhaps a variable used as one. or A large transmitting mica -- This may be physically too large 3. Switch the existing padder so that it is only in circuit on 80 and therefore only handles a minority of the current. Not truly optimum. 73 & Good morning, Marv WC6W -- "Partain, Chuck" wrote: I'll go peruse the archives again but I'm going to post this here anyway. I noticed while on 20m tonight running about a kw that the tank coil was getting HOT, one of the wires connected to it (the 20m section) was turning a nice shade of darker! the coil is warm. also When I pulled the cover (I was looking to see where all the hot smell was comming from) I noticed that a doorknob cap I have installed next to the load vacuum cap was also warm! i'm using that cap to get me on 80m its in parallel with the 1000pf vacuum cap everyone I talk to with it said they notice NO noticible difference when its on or off only a few s units higher! (no audible distortion) the cap I am using is labelled n4700 591m 30kv 706h and has a c with an m inside of it. are these suitable for what I am doing? hell, its 30kv! why warm? what should I be looking for? the amp seems to load up pretty good into the vertical with an swr of less than 1.3 to 1 thanks for any help chuck, ka1mwp the schematic is at http://home.comcast.net/~ka1mwp _______________________________________________ Amps mailing list Amps@contesting.com http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/amps ________________________________________________________________________ Try Juno Platinum for Free! Then, only $9.95/month! Unlimited Internet Access with 1GB of Email Storage. Visit http://www.juno.com/value to sign up today!