[TenTec] OT: Need advice checking out a stored 3-500

[Kim Elmore]

  Everything authoritative (i.e, from Eimac) says that running the 
filaments does nothing. I've read from several amp designers that the 
3-500Z simply doesn;y leak, so the vacuum remains patent. The only 
getter in the tube is the zirconium on the plate of the original 3-500Z 
(Z for zirconium). Then the zirconium gets red-hot, it acts as a getter, 
so the tube is constantly gettering as it operates. This isn't true of 
other transmitting tubes and I don't know about the graphite 3-500ZGs.

Install it, plug in the amp and turn it on. It'll either be fine or it 
will flash over.

Kim N5OP

> -----Original Message----- From: Al Gulseth
> Sent: Sunday, August 03, 2014 8:41 PM
> To: TenTec at contesting.com
> Subject: [TenTec] OT: Need advice checking out a stored 3-500
>
> (Posting this for a local fellow ham who currently isn't on the web)
>
> As the subject line says, a local ham friend of mine asked me today 
> about how
> to go about checking out/waking up a 3-500 (Z?) that came as a spare 
> with his
> AL-80A when he bought it a few years back. He's not really sure how 
> long the
> tube had been sitting around unused/un-exercised before he bought the 
> amp.
> I've seen conflicting info on how to go about it, and the last time I 
> had my
> hands on something like that was 30+ years ago when I worked in the 
> broadcast
> industry before I switched to a different career. Any suggestions? 
> Other than
> his amp I don't have any way that I know of to check it.
>
> Contact me off list if appropriate.
>
> BTW Ten-Tec connection: he's driving it with an Orion.
>
> TNX/73, Al
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-- 

Kim Elmore, Ph.D. (Adj. Assoc. Prof., OU School of Meteorology, CCM, PP 
SEL/MEL/Glider, N5OP, 2nd Class Radiotelegraph, GROL)

/"In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in 
practice, there is." //-- Attributed to many people; it's so true that 
it doesn't matter who said it./