Sounds like somebody's wife has him hung out by ummm... Well you get the picture.

Maybe if he feels that bad about it he should just turn in his ham license. Wait, is this the guy that had his license yanked at one time? Sounds like he is the one that is not happy. It's like anything else you can always make time for it. Shouldn't be that big a deal. I'm pursuing a career and still have plenty of time to get on the air. I'm sure not gonna sit around on the couch glued to a tv in my off time.

That's why I had chosen not to do it. I'll get in touch with them hopefully tomorrow and see what they will do. Tried calling them today but they must be taking Monday off for New Year.

All connections are secure. Doesn't really seem to help by tightening anything. I'm assuming at this point the solution is going to be to end up replacing the transformer. Might be some loose windings? I will give Astron a call this week and see what they advise. Would be mighty nice if they would just send me the part without having to send the whole supply back but I doubt they would be that generous  . I'm definitely going to be investing in an inrush protector for the power supply. I know theirs a mod for the Astron's that can be done pretty cheaply but I'm not really up to the task right now. I guess I should just leave it on all the time but occasionally I have reason to turn it off which cannot be avoided.

I finally had a chance to sit down and do some checking today. You are correct in that the transformer is causing the vibrations  that increase with current draw. The vibrations from the transformer were causing the filter cap to rattle a little making it a little louder. The loud transformer hum and vibrations that present under a load are still there. I did manage to dig up my old AC clamp on ammeter and the idle current on the AC input is almost nothing. It is well under 1 amp. Somewhere in the neighborhood of about 0.2 or 0.3 amps. All other components including the filter cap seem to check out ok to the best of my ability to check them. Seems the vibrations are coming straight out of  the transformer. At least I have narrowed that part down.


Just an added note. No signs of anything heating up on the regulator board. So far the bridge diodes check out to be ok.

On further inspection the vibration/hum with loading seems to be coming from the electrolytic filter area rather than the transformer. I haven't had a chance get out the meter and do any further checking but that gives me a good starting point and something to keep me busy this weekend. I will let you all know what I find as I continue to narrow it down.

I recently purchased a new Astron RS-50M linear power supply about 6 months ago. I have noticed a few times when turning on the power supply the current rushing in would be enough to trip the 20 amp breaker in the electrical box. A couple of days ago when powering up the supply it again tripped the breaker. I reset the breaker and turned on the power supply again only to trip the breaker again. This time the 10 amp AC line fuse in the power supply blew as well. Replaced fuse and restarted the power supply with no problems, no breakers thrown this time. It came one and powered up just as pretty as ever. Suddenly after the above mentioned fiasco, when I apply loads as small as 4 or 5 amps the power supply has developed a very loud and annoying vibration/hum. The higher the load the louder the hum and vibration. Almost sounds like water pipes rattling. It never did this before. This happened suddenly, not over time. The power supply has never been drawn for more than about 25 amps. I run it pretty conservative. About all I ever run on it is a 100 watt hf rig.

On further examination, the voltage coming out of the power supply holds steady at 13.81 volts regardless of the load. It might drop to 13.80 or 13.79 but that is expected. Not much on the particular circuit that the power supply is plugged into so their shouldn't be much load on the AC line at any given time. At idle the power supply only has the normal low audible hum.

Other than the hum and vibration being really loud and annoying (assuming it is from the transformer) the power supply seems to be working just fine. I tightened the screws on the bottom of the transformer where it mounts to the case but that didn't really do anything to help. I have tried contacting Astron but they must be closed for the holidays this week. I'm not really sure it's worth packing the thing up and shipping it across the country for warranty service. Shipping would cost half as much as the power supply is worth.

In the meantime while I'm waiting to get in touch with Astron I just wanted to see if anyone had any ideas is to what might be the problem or what might be going bad in the power supply to cause this issue? I have always had good service out of Astron supplies over the years. This is the first issue I have ever really had with one of their power supplies.

The heck with the ham gear. I'd be happy if Santa would just bring me a regular full time job. Being out of school for 8 months after graduating in the medical field and no hits for a job after applying every week is starting to get old. Working 2 days a week for chump change right now just ain't going very far.

The way it's going I'm gonna have to start selling my ham gear before long.

I have got some really good deals from Gigaparts including free shipping on a pretty large power supply. Ended up getting it quiet a bit less than anybody else could have sold it to me for including the free shipping.

Looks like those whips would move around in the wind too much and mess up the pattern but I don't know how bad. Then again it might not make much difference. Just a thought that occurred to me.

Mars was booming in 5/9 yesterday all over ten meters. They all promised me a qsl card. Can I count it towards WAP (Worked all Planets)?

I have my power supply with FT-950 plugged into a medium size UPS unit. Not so much as to keep the radio usable during an outage but for the same reason you would plug your computer into one. At least it gives me the chance to shut it down safely should I have sudden power failures hopefully avoiding any damage.

BTW; I love the FT-950. Great bang for the buck.

Their are many others besides Heil that work great but you will have to shop around. MXL, Shure, and others make good studio mics. I know a lot of people using MXL mic's and they sound great. You would probably have to look somewhere besides the ham catalogs to find brands other than Heil. Musicians friend and B & H Photo are a couple of places that sell a lot of audio gear and various studio mic's. Some studio mics will require 48vdc that your rig probably won't supply so be aware of that. You would have to supply the voltage from another source. Fortunately the PR-781 is not one of these.

I currently use a Heil studio mic with the Pl-2T and love it. However, price is not everything. Their are a lot of mics out there for half the price of the Heil's that sound every bit as good. You will just have to experiment and figure out what works for you. I don't think you will go wrong with the PR-781 though.


As for T/R. The Heil cable has a pigtail with a 1/4" mono plug. I have the Heil HS-2 hand switch and it is very comfortable and easy to key. No locking feature but I haven't found it to be too much of an issue when keying for long periods of time as the key switch is pretty light to the touch.

The Astron RS-35M is a great power supply. I had one for years and never had a problem with it. Plenty of room for the V-8000 and some amperage to spare should you add an HF rig later down the line. The V-8000 is a great little 2 meter rig. I also had one for a while and their solid as a rock. The cooling fan can get a little noisy if you run full power but other than that I never had any problems or dislikes with it.

I don't know if this helps any but I usually program mine in topographical order. I have found that this has worked pretty good for me. I start with maybe one or two simplex frequencies then local repeaters nearest my home. After that I just program repeaters in the area that I travel most often, second most often etc. It's not perfect but I find that at least I don't have to run back and fourth across the channel spectrum just to change between two local frequencies. I don't program every single repeater, just the ones I'm likely to use. I generally use whatever memory channels are left at the end to program public service frequencies for monitoring. Having said all that, about all I use my HT for these days is for a scanner. VHF/UHF activity in my area has just about disappeared. It's certainly nothing like it was way back when I was new to the hobby.

I don't know about shipping to Thailand but I have experienced similar issues when sending packages to other countries that are known to steal packages when they think it might be of some value. I have probably had about a 60-70% rate of successful delivery to some of these places. I do not like shipping out of Country for that reason.