[TowerTalk] Polyphaser

[Roger (K8RI)]

Rick Stealey wrote:
>  how do I check out the unit to know if its 
>   
>>> still good?
>>>
>>>       
>
> You take a power supply that puts out 800-1000 volts, put a very large resistor in series with a microampmeter, and attach it to the output coax connector (the antenna side).  There is a gas tube inside from this point to ground. 
None of mine have gas tubes. They have a solid state device.
>  It is an open circuit until the breakdown voltage is reached.  So as you crank up the voltage and watch the ampmeter suddenly it will go from zero current to a value limited by the resistor.  A kw polyphasor will begin drawing current in the 600-800 volt range.  
> If it is blown it will never draw any current.
>   
Or it'll be a dead short.

The ones I've had fail did neither. The only indication was a high SWR.
Stick an antenna analyzer on it with a dummy load on the antenna side. 
If the SWR is high it's bad.
It may actually require power to show it's bad. The two I had that were 
bad, "heard" signals just fine, but when I'd transmit the SWR was about 
5:1 when it was otherwise around 1.2:1

73

Roger (K8RI)
> I didn't look up the model number of your unit to see if it is a 2 kw or a low power unit.  The high power one breaks down as I indicated above and the low power one probably in the 300 volt area (give or take a couple hundred volts !)
>
> Rick  K2XT
>  		 	   		  
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