If the power supply is designed to use 866A's, don't worry about using
3B28's; they will work just as well. They are exact replacements, and tend
to give less trouble than the MV tubes, even though they don't have the
pretty blue glow.
If you look closely in dim light, you can see a violet glow deep inside the
plate structure.
Likewise, the 4B32 is a direct replacement for the 872A. The 3B28 and 4B32
use xenon gas instead of mercury as the ionising medium.
Of course, solid state replacements will also give identical performance.
Mercury, xenon and solid state rectifiers all have a fixed voltage drop that
is insignificant in HV applications. High vacuum tubes have a substantial
voltage drop at normal operating current. There is a high-vacuum version of
the 866A, the 836. I'm not sure if it has as high a p.i.v. rating as the
866A, or if it is more like the old 866 that had only 7.5 kv piv instead of
the 10kv rating of 866A's and 872A's, 3B28's and 4B32's.
I have found the best on-line source for tube info in Frank's Electron Tube
Data sheets at http://tubes.mkdw.net/index.html. For some reason, the USA
link is dead, but any of the other links will work, and they all have
identical data. I usually click on the Australian one. You can find data
on obscure tubes such as subminiatures, European types and special military
types. On most tube types there are multiple data sheets of data published
by different manufacturers, which sometimes gives you more information than
books like the RCA, GE or Eimac manuals.
Don k4kyv
______________________________________________________________
Our Main Website: http://www.amfone.net
AMRadio mailing list
Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/
List Rules (must read!): http://w5ami.net/amradiofaq.html
List Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/amradio
Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.html
Post: mailto:[email protected]
To unsubscribe, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with
the word unsubscribe in the message body.
