On 3/5/2012 11:09 AM, W7GJ, Lance wrote: > However, my solid state 6M-1000 amplifier has a little mechanical antenna > relay in > it, and the last thing I can afford to do is to hot switch that amp on a 6m > EME > DXpedition and blow up the transistors and/or the little transfer relay > inside it.
I understand, and like many others, greatly appreciate your initiative to recycle those high quality ch 2 power amps for 6M. BUT -- designing and building some sort of bulletproof T/R antenna switching ought to be part of that conversion. It doesn't take much to rig a suitable vacuum relay like the Jennings, Kilovac, or Gigavac, and the Ten Tec schematics for the Titan 425, which are on my website, illustrate an easy way to sense that the relay has positively switched. They did it in the late 70s with discrete small signal NPN and PNP transistors, and it still works just fine 35 years later. BTW -- Alpha uses Gigavac relays in their current production, and they're not expensive. They will sell small quantities directly to hams at about $80 each, and I've heard of at least respected ham vendor who beats that price by something like 20%. While it's great to see more features built into Elecraft rigs, we must realize that they are not free (at a minimum there is engineering time to do the programming and document it), some can be costly or impractical, depending on the hardware, and when they are costly, it is not reasonable to burden all KX3 owners with things that can (and should) be done outside the radio. 73, Jim K9YC ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:[email protected] This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
