[TenTec] Herc II problem.

[Richard B Drake]

About 7 or 8 months ago I bought a brand new Herc II and 9420
power supply. I put it on my desk, made a contact on 40 meters and
it was working great. The first time I tried it on 10 meters,
something blew. I sent it back to Ten-Tec, they repaired it and
returned it. Again it was fine until I tried 10 meters and it
happened again. This time Ten-Tec modified a couple of bias
resistors. After that it worked fine, even on 10 meters up until
about 3 weeks ago when it blew again. The scenario is this:

Band switch on 10 meters, dummy load attached, exciter (Omni 6+)
drive fully counter clockwise, put it in tune mode, slowly
increase the drive while watching the led's on the Herc. Suddenly
I realize that the drive is fully clockwise, over 100 watts of
drive and the Herc is still only at about 300 watts. The overdrive
light never came on, but after that I can't achieve full output on
any band.

I sent it back for the third time. I just got a call from Paul
Clinton saying that they had repaired it again and exactly the
same thing, the same set of transistors had failed each time. He
said that at first they thought it was just bad parts but now with
the same thing happening a third time it has to be something else
and he suggested that I return the 9420 power supply for them to
check out while everything is still under warranty. As far as I
can tell, there is nothing wrong with the power supply, it puts
out 13.8 volts, also powers the Omni and shows no signs of
trouble. I really don't want to lug that thing down to UPS and
ship it, but I suppose I might have to. Anyone else have a similar
experience - what was the solution?

----
73, Rich - W3ZJ


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