[RFI] New Astron Switching PS RFI?

KD7JYK DM09 kd7jyk at earthlink.net
Mon May 18 14:09:20 EDT 2020


"Imo, linear power supplies are still the best....my Astron 
RS-35m....Nuff said here about that."

Not quite...  Astrons, from the 90's onward, were notoriously bad...  I 
have a pile of bad ones.  Not a few, about two dozen, from multiple 
radio operators over the years, from their little 7A model to the 50A.  
Bad caps, bad regulators, bad transformers, bad grounding, bad 
rectifiers bad power switches, you name it.  Random failures include 
sudden over-voltage with failed protection circuits, sudden AC output, 
sudden low voltage output, sudden low current output (proper voltage, 
shuts down at a few mA), physically disintegrating transformers 
resulting in humming/buzzing (loud enough to drive people from a 1,200 
square foot room), metallic debris from mechanical transformer failure 
(magnetic fields pulverized some), erratic operation due to electrical 
grounds through the painted case and screws, missing/disconnected ground 
wires, extreme heating issues, et cetera...  Astron was sending out tons 
of free parts for them, for years, but so many, were so bad, with so 
many issues, I gave up fixing them, and they were tired of hearing about 
their own products.  Maybe they got their crap together, maybe not.  
Their cases are nice, take the freebies, swap the guts.

The question is, who makes truly GOOD power supply nowadays?

Kurt



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