| KB7UED |
Rating:  |
2006-05-16 | |
| Great amp! |
Time Owned: 3 to 6 months. |
| I read the reviews before buying this amp for over a year. I found that those who were unhappy either had high SWR. Low voltage or amperage, or some other install issue. I have had nothing but great reports from the day I hooked it up. It has withstood heat and cold, rough riding in the cars, and is easy to hook up and transparent to operate. You simply will not do better in a 500 watt stand alone amp. I don't even mention when it is on or off, as it does not "sound" like an amp. Of course, I usually have better luck with this sort of thing than most. Like the SG-2000, if you want lots of knobs to fool with, or to micro manage your radio with tens of worthless settings, then this isn't the amp for you. However, IF YOU JUST WANT TO GET OUT QRO-style, then this is the one. No noises, no loud fans, and no hassle. Just feed it to a match with enough volts and amps and you will play with the big dogs! I would buy another in a minute! |
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| XV2PS |
Rating: |
2006-03-07 | |
| excellent on manual |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Bought it 1,350 US incl. cooling fan in Singapore, and brought it in Vietnam.
first view: heavy, solid, cooling fan could be betterly shaped with less space taken.
Brought home between an IC 718 and a Log periodic 7el.
First test on a 100AH battery: 12.6V gave only 400 watts voltage down to 10.6V.
I bought EP 850 regulated power from Manson. 40 amps continuous, 50 peak. I put them in parallel (shop garanteed it could be done).
Bang! 500w sharp with 75w drive on digital, just before attenuator switches on.
All on automatic mode, the delay was not really on pushing the PTT, but at releasing it. It cuts part of the reply I get. But with the PTT control on manual: perfect at begining and at end.
On SSB: 75w drive OK, but 100w drive makes the peak quite often at 500w (on ssb!) without attenuator on. Could be shooting near as a 700w? And with a clean signal.
Comments:
all connections being on front panel is a bit messy for a base station. Cables even hide part of leds...
Power connection might have been put near the side to avoid this. Coax sockets might have been better in the back. But Ok, for mobile, the current setting is better.
Hardware such as power switch, access plugs, fan connection, manual/automatic switch might have been replaced by something looking higher quality.
Leds: always red. Why not green, and keep the red ones for the alerts or problems? Then no need to read all the time.
Once on 10M SSB, I kept the manual filter selected for the band under. It ran the unit down, drawing fairly more than 100 amps. This could be a serious problem....
All in all, it seems to be solid stuff and well delivering its 500W, and probably peaking over in ssb. In automatic mode, you get some delays on PTT, but with manual setting, all is fine.
It is at least a 4.5 to 5 rate.
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| N4QT |
Rating: |
2005-10-08 | |
| Great Amp! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| My SG-500 is a little over two months old now. It is a trouble free amp. It is totaly microprocessor controlled and all solid state. I am getting excellent audio reports and breaking pileups almost as well as I did with my now sold Alpha 87A. Once it is set up you can forget it. 50 watts of drive from my PROIII gives me a solid 500+ watts on all HF bands. This amp has been around for at least 10 years.It is a bit expensive if you add the fan kit which the amp really needs but is very well built. You get what you pay for and this amp is worth the extra expense. |
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| N4RAP |
Rating: |
2005-08-02 | |
| Mine is Great |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
I beleive, that when you find a good thing...you need two or three of them. Works great, but don't try that with a girlfriend or a wife. I had one in my truck for the last 7 years and it has never malfunctioned. I installed my home made fans and it takes a likin' and keeps on tickin'. I can transmit on the coax alone or the coax and the antenna mount alone or the car frame or the dirt under my car and it protects itself!!! I costs a lot but has a 5 year warranty and that's got to be worth something!
I liked it so well that I bought another one to use at the base station. the second one developed a "brain tumor" of some sort after about two months of operation. It kept on shutting off, just as soon as you would key the mike. I sent it back and it was fixed in about 3 weeks. SGC said that some component in the brain had gone bad and the amplifier was shutting itself down for protection against the imaginary and non-existent final transistor problem. Anyway it was a quick and simple and Free fix and it has worked without anymore problems for the last 6 years. I put it in my Lexus about 4 months ago and its still going strong.
Even though I had a small problem...I would not hesitate to buy another one. If one of mine were to get struck by lightning or blow up today...I would buy anoter Smartcube tomorrow and would not take any substitues. |
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| KG5JJ |
Rating: |
2003-12-07 | |
| Solid, but no QSK |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
This is a well built amp, but no QSK (semi break-in only). For the price charged for the SG-500 and the PS-50 recommended supply (which HAS to be supplemented with either another parallel PS-50 or a marine battery for worry free 500 watt CW) it should come with QSK standard. Even selecting the filter banks manually would be an acceptable trade-off if it would allow QSK.
The amp is well-protected from operating faults, and I suspect that the auto-filter select, and all the sensing/switching protection circuitry probably negate any fast T/R switching for QSK.
This is an otherwise rock-solid amplifier that may be placed out of the way under the bench, to leave room for more goodies on it.
73 KG5JJ (Mike) |
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| K1VIP |
Rating: |
2003-09-09 | |
| Great amp and easy to operate |
Time Owned: 6 to 12 months. |
I have had this amp now for almost a year. My first experiences were rough, but through tech support and yahoo groups, was able to make this amp really shine.
I have a 60amp regulated supply that didnt cut it. I got the SGC 50amp switched supply and most of my headaches were gone. Not a cheap solution to my problem, but an effective one. (otherwise I would of rated it a 5!)
Also I beefed up my station grounds and added a torrid choke on the control line and the remote control switch line and shes been crankin %100 ever since!
It is really nice when conditions start fading to be able to flip the switch and just go. I have gotten alot of good audio reports running this amplifier as well.
A nice ACE to be able to slap on the table when conditions warrant-
John-W9NRG
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| WA6AQL |
Rating: |
2003-08-29 | |
| Great Amp, But read inst. |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
| Only problem I had was that I used a malfunctioning power supply. Once I got rid of it the Cube worked as advertised. Power supplies are succeptable to RF interference and if anything is wrong with it, it will rear it's ugly head. If you have problems with swr shut downs try a good battery 100 amp/hour and you should solve your problem. A quality commercial supply made for communications work is surely worth the extra monies spent. Strong Amplifier and well built and SGC's staff is a good source of help. |
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| DK3QN |
Rating: |
2003-06-26 | |
| solid but... |
Time Owned: more than 12 months. |
The SG-500 is a solidly built transistor amplifier. It uses 8 MRF-458 transistors, similar to the Ten-Tec Hercules II design. You need to provide a minimum of 80 amps peak if you want to drive it to max output.
The band autosensing is not practical for average amateur usage. The electronics analyse the transmit frequency and switch LPF's accordingly each time you put the amplifier into transmit. Plus RF VOX RX/TX switching. Ugh!
Better approach is to flip the internal switch so that RX/TX goes via PTT as well as the band LPF is selected by an external selector switch connected to the front terminals. |
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| KE5C |
Rating: |
2003-05-04 | |
| Well built but ... |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
The amplifier rates a 4, the service a 1, hence, 3 for the average, and that’s rounding up. I purchased a unit made in 1998 from the second owner who had ordered it from the factory but received it from A.E.S. He had only used it on 40 meters, and had never measured the output power on any other band - see 21 Mhz comments later. Using a 105 amp 13.8 volt power supply and #8 wire, I measured 13.0 volts under load at the amp - 14.0 would improve the output, of course. My power meter is a Bird 43 with 500 W and 1000W slugs, and my dummy load is a 600 W air-cooled Bird, non-inductive through the FAA frequencies (120 plus Mhz). My exciter is a Ten-Tec Omni 6 Plus with the power out turned down just enough to avoid tripping the attenuator in the SG-500:
1.8 MHz = 600 W
3.5 MHz = 580 W
7 MHz = 560 W
14 MHz = 500 W
18 MHz = 440 W
21 MHz = 380 W
24 MHz = 440 W
28 MHz = 400 W
Responders to my post on the www.contesting.com Amps Reflector thought, except for 21 MHz, these readings were fairly typical. This amplifier is well thought out, and well constructed. I set three 12 volt cooling fans which are necessary for CW operation on one side of the amp blowing across the heat sink on the bottom, and hooked them to the fan connecter. They cycle on and off as the amplifier warms and cools. On the plus side, I think this will be a very nice mobile amplifier, especially for the low bands. So far the auto band select and auto PTT have worked well. The attenuation has switched in when I overdrive it, and the one time I forgot to change all the settings on my tuner, the vswr protection worked just as advertised.
Clearly I had been spoiled by Ten-Tec service. They route telephone calls to knowledgeable technicians – or engineers – who offer helpful suggestions. Instead, SGC gave me two options – leave a voice mail or, preferably, send an e-mail. I did the latter, and received one response per day (maximum), and not from a technician or engineer. They did provide the information about activating 28 MHz. Their idea about the low output on 21 MHz was, send it to the factory and for $300 plus return shipping, they would fix it. Oh, and it cannot be a manufacturing “issue”, yet they did not respond when I asked for a copy of their final quality control checkout listing the output power on each band at the time of manufacture. So if you purchase one of these, new or used, immediately check the power on each band.
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| VE4MM |
Rating:  |
2003-01-08 | |
| NOT AS ADVERTISED! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I purchased this amp in December 2002 with an Astron 70A power supply with the intent to operate it in some contests on SSB.
The ads state that the optional fan is required with CW operation but nothing stated that with SSB contest operation the additional $300.00 fan was required. For the price, it should come standard with the unit.
It shut down on high-heat after about 1-1/2 hours of use.
The manual is outdated and the model# I have is the US Version without 10 Meters but it did have 10 Meters installed.
It is a unit that shuts down on any little mis-match.
Since I am in Canada the amplifier and power supply cost me $2250.00 Canadian. I refuse to spend an additional $500.00 CDN of the fan assembly.
I am not a happy customer. Nice Paperweight.
I read the reviews here prior to my purchase.
The e-mails that I have received from other SG-500 owners speak the truth. "DUMB CUBE".
I only hope that other owners post their real thoughts.
I should have bought an AMERITRON 811!!!!
73
Michael Mark, P.Eng.,B.Sc EE, Life Member ARRL |
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