Remember, the tone you hear on a CW signal is not the center frequency of the transmitter, but rather the *difference* between the center frequency and the frequency setting of your rig.  The "sidetone" -- which is actually a beat note that happens due to frequency mixing, which creates two other signals besides the original two, one is sum and the other is difference.  

To tune a CW signal properly, you should match the tone or note of the signal heard to the sidetone oscillator of your rig by zero beating them.  


KE3WD

Please, "self policing" has been bad enough!  

Why more linear amp mfrs don't specify opto-isolation on their keying lines is a mystery.  

Maybe Emptron does, can't find a schematic, but the amp is certainly a full house from the looks of things.  


But I'd want to know for certain before going astray from what the manufacturer of the rig recommends.  



!

Has anyone inspected the schematic of this amp to see how much real isolation is on these lines?  Specifically the keying line.  

I don't trust one transistor as being "isolation" and sometimes don't like the darlington pair, either.  

If there is any chance of higher voltage or current being passed to the rig due to a component failure of any kind in the amplifier, well, you figure it out.  

That's why I made the reference to lightning and ground earlier, having spent my wasted youth at the repair benches undoing the doings of hamateurs.  

One of those things that works as long as it works.  

Of course, if ya got a lotta money, you can take more risks.  


KE3WD

If you have concerns about regulator failure when dealing with that much higher line voltage, since you are the designer of this amp, consider following the transistor regulator circuit with a "brute force" zener clamp of slightly higher voltage than the regulator normally controls.  

Fail safe via redundancy, be sure to design some sort of indication that the main transistor regulator has failed, though.  Meters can do the job for the observant, window comparators with LED or other alarm output is always a good thing, though.  

Another method of protection would be to use the comparator method to control a shut down interrupter relay or the like, too.  Mfrs. likely would prefer the old "crowbar" circuit that blows the fuse by means of shorting the supply output with SCR or the like across it, bah.  When designing and building for ourselves we can often afford to take the extra step and add the extra components.  


KE3WD

ALC or not ALC is one of those continuing arguments among eHams.  

I'm in the "better to use it and adjust it properly" camp.  

For reasons already explained above, it is extra protection against overshoots that you really can't measure without a bench full of test equipment, but the good news is that you don't have to do that if you just hook the ALC up, adjust it per manufacter's instructions and let it do its intended thing.  


KE3WD

Now's the time for CW...

>>here in the US why pay the $15,000-20,000 for certification<<

Don't know what outfit you've been dealin' with, but somebody is rippin' you off, friend.  


Companies I've worked for typically pay about $200/hr, by the hour, with DFS devices costing about a thousand more on top.  

100 hours to certify a hamband linear amplifier seems like somebody is paddin' the chit just a little bit...


!

Transistor pass regulation can typically be designed to be more efficient.  

Transistor pass can also take advantage of capacitance multiplication, resulting in better ripple control at lower overall cost.  

Transistor pass typically still uses a zener for regulation, but because the zener is inserted at a low current point in the circuit, the designer can specify a simple and inexpensive low wattage rating zener there, along with a much lower wattage current dropping resistor.  

Whether the pass transistor is FET or Bipolar may not matter all that much, really, IMO, although higher voltages, I'd try to go with the more expensive FET these days.  There is also a good thing there to be had from isolation, depending upon the characteristics of the particular FET in question.  

The typical "zener only" regulation method is both ancient and inefficient.  Space heater.  

This would apply to any regulation method, really, not just for the Screens.  


KE3WD

To copy the old Morse with the Sounder, you have to have a good internal "clock" sense in order to tell the spaces.  

The visual feedback of being able to see the electromagnetic sounder operate was also used sometimes during copy, when radio became the mode, couldn't do that very easily at all.  

Also, the hispeed Morse of today far outstrips what could be done with that system, too.  


!

The old time telegraph operator's duties entailed far more than "sitting at the desk".  

Batteries were open jar acid filled things that required constant daily attention.  This was a dangerous job.  

Ops were often tasked with "riding the line" -- saddling up a horse and following the line back from their station looking for breaks, etc.  -- and repairing them.  Many also knew the art of pole making by hand, replacement, etc.  

They were also generally tasked with building maintenance, billing, all paperwork for their station, interaction with the public, equipment maintenance, even the delivery of the paper messages in many rural stations.  

The urban stations had it a bit easier, but not much.  

Of course, there was a certain prestige to the position and naturally it beat the pants off of labor position jobs, but the telegraph operator's position stood somewhere between the white collar and blue collar jobs of the times.  

There are good books about the life and times of the old telegraph ops to be found.  

But nobody had an easy life like we have it today.  


KE3WD

"Just because YOUR"  not "you're" -- sorry.  

PIMF


KE3WD hits the key too fast.  

Bill, you should take ICOM's advice, although you could add the Ameritron buffer kit to their list.  

There will likely be some eHams coming along telling you that you don't need to use the buffer, nor the ALC, yadda yadda yadda, my advice is to ignore those outright.  

Just because you're antenna has never been hit by lightning is no reason not to ground it properly.  

The same analogy applies to the amplifier buffering situation.  

I design and build my own amp buffer circuits, but if you are not experienced along those lines, protect your much more expensive investment of rig and amp with the factory designed and proper buffer interface kit.  

Ameritrons come with all the cables...


KE3WD

And the code was different from the International Morse Code that we use today.

"The original "MORSE CODE" used by Samuel Morse since the 1840's to allow letters to be sent as short electrical signals (dots) and long electrical signals (dashes) along with some embedded spaces was also called the "AMERICAN" MORSE CODE.
It was widely used throughout Europe and America in very early (mid 1800's) land-line communications and has continued to be used to the present in America for this form of Land-Line telegraphic communication in which the signals were carried across the land by lines (wires) supported by telegraph poles.
Land-line communications use "sounders" to allow the receiving operator to "hear" the clicking sounds of the code and to translate them into letters. The early "Morse Code" was well suited for this form of communication but could not easily be used for radio telegraphic communication due to the embedded spaces which were actually an integral part of several letters. For instance, the letter " o " was dot-space-dot in the original Morse Code."

http://www.chss.montclair.edu/~pererat/percode.htm

The paid download services are often much more comprehensive in nature, covering a wider range of products, even among ham products.  

I will search a bit for a freebie manual first, of course, but do like being able to get my hands on a service manual when some piece crosses the bench were info is needed.  

And being able to do so via the internet and paypal or the card is so much faster it isn't funny.  

Gone are the days when customers would call and you had to tell them you were still waiting on the snail mail manual.  


The free sites should be viewed as a bonus and not the norm IMO.  

But some will pitch a you-know-what in paradise I guess.


KE3WD