[CQ-Contest] LINE VOLTAGE & YOUR AMP??

[Spike Lazar]

>Jim Fisher wrote, that:

>W5AJ wrote about communicating with his power company about
>line voltages. 

>Jim Fisher: I have had an experience which may be of interest
>to other amplifier owners. My comments to the power company:
>I was lucky my device had an internal monitoring system.
>Otherwise, I could have had shortened tube life or other problems
>and never known why.<


In 1972 or 73 when Dick Ehrhorn was traveling the summer hamfest
circuit (near Chicago) hawking his Alpha Amplifiers like Ginzu
knives, I bought one from him.   Alpha 77 :-)

That was my second good deal of the day. The first was a six pack
of Coors beer for only 5 bucks. I gave him $900 and 30L1 for a hangar
queen (shop amp, which they did their mods and changes on. who knows,
maybe this was the one with the brick on the key? What say Dick?)

Well I had extremely high line voltage unbeknown to me at the time.
I blew the plate transformer (melted insulation) because of the
"I" squared "R" losses caused by the high line voltage. Several
months later the 8877 developed interminent filaments.

The meltdown had occurred during Sweepstakes and the Alpha's service
was as good back then as today. I had that amplifier repaired and
back before before the next weekend. (Dick had informed me that
this was the first and only plate transformer ever lost and if I
did it again, I was on my own.)

Also I was having problems with my 32S3, while the air when
transmitting I was also transmitting interminent crackling 
sounds up and down the whole band. I was having a component
breakdown from the high line voltage. (which I was still
unaware of.)

I had practically rebuilt that 32S3 trying to fix it. (Not an
easy job, for each Collins connection was wire wrapped with a
shot of Glipko on it). So I finally broke down and called Collins
on the telephone and spoke to one of the engineers. They invited
me out so I drove out to Cedar Rapids and spent the whole day with
one of their bench techs, but we could not duplicate the problem.
It was at their suggestion that I check my line voltage when
returning home.

The power company was unsympathetic to my complaints, they had
put a line recorder on my line and it was just .5 volts short of
being out of spect on the high side. The power company repairman
was a ham, so I offered him a 4-1000A to fudge that .5 volts and
he refused. If he would have, they would have corrected the problem.

Instead, I never pushed the Alpha, I also bought a variac to control
the line voltage for everything else in the shack, which cured my
32S3 problems.

Spike, W9XR



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