[TowerTalk] ICE 419?

[Mark n2qt]

I run low power rtty contests with a dunestar 600 and an ICE419,  100watts 
heavy duty cycle.

I have popped the caps on the 20M section in the ICE419 a couple of times. 
At least they
are easy to get to and replace (and the tuning isn't so hard either).

No damage to the Dunestar.   However be aware the standard 600 is tuned with 
a CW
bias and if you run SSB up in the high end of the band (especially on 
80/160) it isn't
a good thing.


Mark n2qt


-----Original Message----- 
From: k3mm at verizon.net
Sent: Monday, January 23, 2012 9:49 AM
To: towertalk at contesting.com
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] ICE 419?

I've never had a failure of my 419's, but plenty with my old Dunestars.

One thing that can cause a lot of problems is running a tuner on your radio 
into a bandpass filter...especially if you have a bad match into  your amp 
or antenna.  Tuners make the radio happy, but not the device it's "forcing" 
power into...it can create huge voltages that will cause the caps to 
fail...or antenna components to fail...etc.

Also, if the filters are a little out of tune, the tuner will try to 
compensate, creating even more stress on the filter...leading to accelerated 
failure.

Ty K3MM


On 01/23/12, Jim Brown<jim at audiosystemsgroup.com> wrote:

On 1/21/2012 4:00 PM, k2qmf at juno.com wrote:
> I seem to recall there was a cap or two that
> went bad in some 419's...

I've had nothing but trouble with the two 419As I bought several years
ago. I'm guessing that the caps are simply under-rated for dissipation,
because it's common for them to fail with only 100W at 2:1 or lower VSWR.

My experience has been that they won't handle more than the 30-50W it
takes to drive my Titan amps. At that level, they seem to hold up OK.
They're currently sitting in my storeroom, having been replaced by a
pair of W3NQNs that are on long term loan.

If you're going to replace any of these caps, I'd try to find some with
higher dissipation ratings.

73, Jim K9YC
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