[TenTec] My Jupiter Problem.. and Power Supplies.

[WmLB@prefer.net]

I have already reported to the readers here that 
Paul at Ten-Tec advised that it was necessary to 
replace the finals in my Jupiter. Rig should be on 
it's way back tomorrow.

My obvious question at that point was what would 
have caused the problem. Obviously at this point, it 
is a speculative exercise, but one of the things 
that Paul suggested was that if the rig had 
transmitted into an open or shorted feedline 
(antenna).. even momentarily, it was possible that 
oscillations were initiated in the finals that lead 
to excessive current draw and their demise. 

He asked me what kind of power supply I had, since 
there are many PS's out there that do not provide 
the load protection needed to insure that  the above 
does not occur.  I told him I had a Astron 35M, 
which has been in service for several years. He 
suggested that that might be part of the problem, 
but when I asked him about Ten-Tec PS units he said 
that the current product line does not have that 
sort of protection built in either. (I gathered the 
earlier ones did)

I just called Astron, who are local to me (Irvine) 
They told me that both the current RM power supplies 
and my older one had current limiting and voltage 
protection. In fact, although I have not tried it, 
he said that I could put a screw driver across the 
output terminals and observe that the voltage goes  
down to "zero" and when that short is removed it 
returns to the nominal output voltage.


No question here... unless you want to offer 
something that might give me some comfort when I 
power up the Jupiter once again.  At this point I 
can only conclude that my original finals had a weak 
link in there somewhere.

Bill

Costa Mesa, CA
Amateur Radio Station: W6WLB