Hello Folks,

I have two 31' verticals. I want to 0 phase them for broadside performance on 40/30/20 meters. I am merely going to ladder line connect between the two of them. What is the general spacing distance I should use; it doesn't have to be exact. I am thinking 20-25' should do it.

I don't have eznec, nor care to set it up on my PC.

Regards & Thanks for your help.

Marc

Hello Doug,

I don't want CW to die, but to thrive.

I am more than happy to QSO with you, I don't care how slow you go.

I hang out on 40M CW, but will also start tooling around (again) on 80, 30, and 20.

Give me an email, if you wanted to QSO: whichwaytobeach@hotmail.com .

There are at least four "tricks" to increasing your receive speed:

1. Get the free CW Decoder v 2.81.2, by Grant Connel, WD6CNF. Throw it on your laptop, get a Y connector, one for your headset, and one to hook up to the microphone connector on your laptop. Hee hee, now this will REALLY increase your receive speed! (Other CW ops, now don't you get mad at me!)

2. Stop being obsessed (jk) with writing every molecule of a letter down. Copy down the Ops name, QTH, RST; things like that.

3. Copy in your head most of the code. This is a bit scary at first, but here is my Marc trick: Only worry about copying the first and last letter of the word! Before you laugh, try it! This method greatly relieves the stress in your mind, and you (gradually, but surely) end up copying the entire word, and greatly increasing your copying speed.

4. Use the Koch CW (G4FON)trainer, and speed up the code speed, but have very wide code spacing (say 5 WPM), then increase the spacing speed, but keep the overall code speed the same.

Enjoy. CW is wonderful, and I feel the CW ops are (I am biased maybe), on average nicer, or at least more "professional" than SSB ops.

There, now I am in real trouble...

Regards,

Marc
KA3DNR
San Diego

Hello Eric,

I would be very happy to CW QSO with you. I also hang out on 40 meters, in the CW region. I don't care how slow you go...don't worry about it.

CW is dying off, as the old folks are dying off. I am serious! It seems to me that the average CW Op age is 70 years old. One more sunspot cycle, and CW will probably be gone.

I don't want this!

Write me at whichwaytobeach@hotmail.com, and put in the subject line CW SKED.

I have tons of time over this three day weekend...

Regards,

Marc
KA3DNR
San Diego

Thank you Steven.

I secretly wondered about the whole "matched" need.

Hi!

Regards,

Marc

Hello John,

I am going to pick up a matched quad 572bs on eBay for $100 (HK originator). They are guaranteed. Well,I hope I don't need to send any back. Others chime in here, if you already used these folks, and had good/bad experiences.

A safer, albeit more expensive (and probably the smarter?) route is to buy Taylor matched quad at RF Parts: http://www.rfparts.com/tubetran.html , for double the price.

There was another thread around here somewhere, that had some hams stating that the Taylor parts are really just the same as the other Chinese tubes, only that, when buying them from RF Parts, they are guaranteed, and that the distributer is "local" (here in So Cal), not China.

Let me know where you eventually pick up your tubes.

Good Luck with your amp, by the way!

Regards,

Marc
KA3DNR

Hello Elmers, et al.,

I plan to buy a quad of 572bs as spares for my AL-572.

Is there a proper way to store them, so that when/if I need them for use/sell them, they won't gas out? For instance,do I take them out of their boxes once a year, place them in the amplifier, and idle them for X hours?

Same question with a slight twist. If one buys a tubed (572b, 3-500z) amplifier, how does one bring up those tubes correctly?

Regards to all,

Marc
KA3DNR

Thank you for your help Phil.

Regards,

Marc

Perhaps I shouldn't say "sure it will be fine"...One thing to consider is RF currents.

Perhaps an RF HV experts can answer this question.

Marc

Hello!

That's a darn good price! I ordered my 470 pF 6KV ceramics through eBay, but they are costing me $7 to get to my door.

The padder in your SB200 is probably like mine, a 500 pF, 2KV cap. You now have 560 pF, 2.5KV caps. I would think they will work fine.

Marc

Hello!

You don't need silver micas...You can use high voltage ceramic caps. Go to eBay.

Regards,

Marc

Hello!

Thank you so much for bringing up this issue!

I have the same exact problem...On 80 and 40 meter, the LOAD is fully counterclockwise, and I can't "peak" those bands. I now see the padder up by the front wafer, and have ordered some HV caps. I hope it fixes my 40 and 80 meters issue, like it has yours...

I read here that the "padder" is only switched in for 80 meters; then why does it also work for 40 meters? It must be that that statement is incorrect; the padder does work for 40 and 80 m, correct?

I anxiously await my HV caps from eBay...

Regards,

Marc

Hello Phil,

Thank you very much for both posts. My filament voltage is therefore perfect(5.9 - 6.0 VAC).

In lay terms, let me see if I can take your advice; here is how i would interpret it practically:

**Unplug amp**

1. Un-solder the current L or Pi input network from the band of interest.
2. Place a ~200 ohm carbon pot across that open input
3. Close the amp relay
4. Measure for lowest SWR (1:1, if possible) with my MFJ HF/VHF SWR Analyzer (259B).
5.  Take out pot, measure the R
6. Use pi.exe (I downloaded it, and it crashes on use for me) to analyze what L and C's you'll need
7. Have a couple 10 pf or trimmer caps available for fine tuning once new pi circuit is soldered in.
8. Result: Happy ham spending an hour vs three+ hours going crazy fine tuning the network one iteration at a time.

Correct?

Thanks,

Marc

Hello Folks,

This is a great thread!

After spending four hours last weekend, I was able to get near-perfect SWR on 80,40,and 20. The tunable inductors have their inserts stuck/ broken, so I had to play around with 10 pF caps to get those bands matched.

My cap fun and games is not working for 15 or 10 though. I see that I have a little over 3:1 SWR for 15/17, which I think I can fix by now playing around with the windings, and try out your cap values mentioned...this will take another three hours, I'll bet.

I am getting "infinite" SWR on 10 meters, and I hope messing around with the windings brings it down to reality, as my trying out various cap values does very little.

OK, so on to my question:

When we measure the filament voltage, is it under load or not? Over here, I am seeing 6.45 VAC unloaded, and 5.9-6.0 when keyed down. Therefore, when is the rating relating to?

Also, PA0FRI, if you are reading this...you are a damn genius. I love your SB 200 mods. I have done many of them. You have the best site on the SB200 if you ask me. Do you have an email address? I want more particulars on your turbo-charging the HV. Great stuff!

Where are all of you CW ops? Stop dying off on me!

Regards to all,

Marc, KA3DNR

Lou,

What is your email address so that I can contact you (too)...None of my SB200 input inductors have tuning slugs, though I can load up OK on 15-20-40, but getting super high SWR on 10, and wacked out, varying SWR back to the rig on 80M

Regards,

Marc
KA3DNR