GI7B Socket Arrived

The beautiful pair of GI7B socket arrived.

Dinner gathering on 1 Dec

Wyn, VR2AX offer me a pair of old GE 3-500z tubes. By this occasion, I arranged a dinner gathering together with Steve, VR2XMQ and Martin, VR2/AA1ON. My XYL and Queanne (Martin’s colleague) also with us. We all have a very enjoyable time.

On Sunday afternoon, I tested the tubes with the following result:

1) Standby current (60mA for two) 25mA + 35mA. My old pair of Eimac took 110mA on both

2) Output power

80M = 850W
40M = 850W
20M = close to 900W
15M = 850W
10M = 650W

One is growing red.

Thank you Wyn for this nice gift to me.

ZL7/SP5EAQ - 40M QSO confirmed

I am very happy to confirm the QSO with ZL7/SP5EAQ on 40M. My antenna is a trap shorten dipole ( GM4JMU design ) with 100W from FT-2000.

GI7B Six Meter Amplifier Project

In year 2000, three of us ( VR2XMQ, VR2IL and me ) purchase a very nice Russian Tube (GI7B) from Dr. Alex UR4LL for the intention of building amplifier for six meters. We never start the project ...
Until early this year, VR2IL sold his tube to me. With the pair of tube, I start to plan the project, including:

1) collect of parts

• For the reason that commercial tube socket is not available and searching around the net and find it is available from W4ZT
• Power transformer, still searching around if it is available to wind in local market. Otherwise, may need to find in Mainland.

2) Circuit - I refer to use YU1Aw design.

I will update any more status of this project in future.

QSL Card Printing

In the past two years, my entire QSL card was printed by QSL Printer in China. The printing quality was good in the very first beginning, however, those current batch of VR10 cards were really disappointed.
1) The cards are curled, probably due to overheat during the laminated process
2) The color not exactly the same, very dark and contrast no good

Last month, UX5UO , a QSL card printer from Ukraine sent me a promotion e-mail about his service. They offer me a sample of 1000 cards for US$22 (shipping cost only)

Without hesitation, I accepted their offer and sending them my shack photo as the QSL card front and simple text design for the back side. After three weeks, the cards arrived and I am very happy with the printing quality. They well care of my image file and edit with their professional skill.
No doubt, my next batch of card printing will go to them for sure.

9U0A & 5U5U QSL Cards

Received very nice QSL card from 9U0A and 5U5U.

SB-200 Power Supply Board

No DX on the band, so spent sometime to upgrade some of the ham equipment. The SB-200 HV have a certain drop when load. So I decided to upgrade the board:
1) replace all capacitors to 270 uF 450V 105 degree c
2) replace all rectifier diodes to IN5408
3) all bleeding resistors from 30K to 100K ohms

It was completed and the high voltage much more stable now.

SB-220 with vacuum variable

I have problem with the tune cap arcing in the SB-220 and caused some damage to the components.

Recently I purchased one 5-250 pF vacuum variable from ebay and installed it for a trial. It works very good from 15M to 80M, but look like it is not working well on 10M. This problem need to be sort out when have free time.

PVRM

On 27 Oct, my birthday, gave me a good memory.

I ran through an auction via the Transport Dept Private Vechicle Rigistration Mark Scheme that have my radio amateur radio callsign as the mark.

It is on my car now.

Shack photo

A new photo was taken on 10 Oct at my radio shack. you can see the new radio FT-2000 sitting in the middle.... cool !!

Six meter QSL card

Today I completed the design of my six meter QSL card.

It use the 3-500z as background.