[TenTec] FW: [DX-CHAT] fire danger in amp

[Ron Notarius WN3VAW]

FYI -- please send any responses to direct to K4VUD at k4vud at hotmail.com

73, ron wn3vaw

-----Original Message-----
From: Charles Harpole <k4vud at hotmail.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 10:46 PM
To: dx-chat at njdxa.org
Subject: [DX-CHAT] fire danger in amp

I just had a scare....  After a 6 month of being off, I turned on my Ten Tec
Titan (the first version) and it blew the fuses with a big arc in the amp
box.  Of course, I put in new fuses and turned it on again (without checking
for interior faults--first mistake) thinking it was an arc in the final
tank, maybe.  With new fuses, I turned it on again.

This time a huge pop and flash in the power supply box (separate from the
amp box), smoke, smell of burning, AND A FIRE INSIDE THE POWER SUPPLY !  The
fire showed real blaze inside for about a minute and then lots of smoke came
out.

The point of my story is that I had the power supply sitting on a piece of
cardboard on top of a wall-to-wall carpet, and it was under my bench in a
tight spot with a very heavy rig in a cardboard box in front of it.  Morale
is that if it had burned a bit longer, it may have caught my house on fire
and it was placed so that jerking it out was very difficult. I did get it
out with great difficulty and put it outside on the concrete deck.  I do
have a master AC kill switch which I turned off fast, but ......

Somthing to think about when placing radios in hard-to-reach spots.  WOW.

73

Charles Harpole
k4vud at hotmail.com