Recent content by Studebaker Hawk

A modulated carrier changes power by a factor of 4. This can cause significant load changes on the radio to amplifier. Some good amplifiers have a load balancing circuit, usually made of resistors, on their inputs, but many amplifiers have a gimmick high / low switch that switches out this...

Yes, I've seen some burned out finals in CB radios too. Even without power reducing protection, they are designed to produce their rated power into a 50 ohm load and will produce less power as the. SWR increases.

Yes, there is.

Yes I know. The drive power for most CB amps is lower than full power CB radios. I had a HealthKit amplifier with resistors with coils around them, on the inputs of each tube that increased the required maximum power from around 50 watts, up to about 100 watts. If running tube final radio...

Looking at the model recommended design amplifiers from the transistor companies, besides proper bias, they have an input circuit that has a network of resistors in it. This because as an AM carrier is modulated, the impedance the radio sees changes and the input circuit resistors are there to...

Yes, I know. Many of the current amplifiers often have a high / low switch that switches out the input balance circuit and causes all sorts of impedance mismatch with the radio, when this switch is switched to high power. The radio itself is often reducing the drive power while being...

The drive impedance of the amplifier changes as the carrier is modulated. A 4 watt carrier 100 percent modulated produces 16 watts of peak power. Solid state amplifiers are supposed to have a resistor network on the input, to balance the drive impedance. The solid state radio protection...

You can try different lengths of coax jumper cable. It should be significantly less than 6 feet, or significantly more than 7 feet. 11ft, 4 inches of RG58 (with hard, clear center insulation) will often fix the swing on the amplifier. You can coil up the jumper to keep it out of the way. The...

Maco has their standard 2000 watt gamma match, a 5,000 watt gamma match that uses the same mounting hardware and SO-239 and may handle more power, but doesn't change or improve the antenna., The Maco 10,000 watt gamma match comes with its own mounting hardware and the coax attaches with...

Many years ago there was a(antenna?) company that sold an antenna switch that allowed switching vertical, horizontal and connecting both together. It was pretty heavy, but I think the circuit for both was power limited. Jo Gunn sold the spider-looking antenna, with vertical and horizontal for...

Icom released a version of the IC-718 referred to as the "2024" version, which supposedly has some new digital IF filtering. One odd thing is the manual for it still references additional crystal filters, which no longer available. I don't know how different it is from the previous US version...

Both resistor wires and spark plugs age. Some resistor plugs burn out the resistor, leaving a spark gap inside of the spark plug. I think (Chinese?) Autolites might be famous for this. Old spark plug wires can leak interference. Before high energy electronic ignitions, it was either resistor...

There is a big difference between a noise blanker and automatic noise limiter. An automatic noise limiter is usually just some capacitors to reduce high frequency noise in the audio and causes little to no distortion and can be kept on. A noise blanker is an active electronic circuit that...