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DX350 oscillation issue

MKwrench

Wooohoooo!!!
Aug 6, 2023
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I grabbed a used DX350 and Black Widow DX250 to fiddle around with They both look nice and clean inside and appear to be all original, except for the DX250 having 2879s in it. I rigged up my test equipment as a station monitor switchable between the antenna and test load.
On a dummy load they both look great and show impressive (to me) numbers on my meters.
I adjust the deadkey to 50w for testing the 250 on high where it swings close to 300w PEP.
Then the 350 with a 65w carrier will swing to over 350w PEP.
My antenna is an attic dipole with a 1:1 feedpoint choke and great match across the 11m band. When I switch to the antenna vs the dummy load I get a strange oscillation that I found gets better when the carrier is raised on the 350 or the channel frequency is raised on the 250.
The 1st video is the 350 acting up on the "AM in" setting on the antenna. The 2nd is High on a dummy load. A few more pictures show AMP voltage, Radio voltage and the extra CM choke I rigged up directly behind the amp, and my attic dipole measurments.
I read somewhere that the metalized mica caps can drift causing issues, coud this be whats up here? What do you think?
 

Attachments

  • A.Low DX350.mp4
    280.6 MB
  • D.High DX350.mp4
    90.3 MB
  • Rad.PS.V.jpg
    Rad.PS.V.jpg
    2 MB · Views: 17
  • Amp.PS.V.jpg
    Amp.PS.V.jpg
    1.3 MB · Views: 17
  • 11M.CMC.jpg
    11M.CMC.jpg
    1.8 MB · Views: 17
  • Attic Dipole.jpg
    Attic Dipole.jpg
    904.9 KB · Views: 18

Don't remember seeing the metal-clad mica caps go bad. Does make me suspect either a loose circuit-board screw or missing/ damaged negative-feedback resistor/capacitor issue. I have seen the capacitor on the secondary of the input transformer go bad and create issues. Worth checking.

73
 
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I'm glad you responded, I'm a little more confident about getting in there and checking things out. I'll start with the feedback sets as recommended.
I'm really not familiar with the insides of these yet.
 
Why does that balun look like it is at the radio end instead of at the dipole? The balun needs to be at the antenna's feed point, not at the radio.

Add a common mode choke at the feedpoint, maybe more than the toroid too. Wind some coax coils if you can.

A 1:1 SWR does not mean the parasitic oscillation (different frequency) sees a 1:1 SWR. If improving the common-mode rejection does not improve things, change coax length to hopefully make the antenna system not support the self-oscillation frequency.
 
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