When it rains it poors
Well quite literally this evening. We believe we have isolated the problem with the 1296 amplifier down to a combination of a voltage drop on the power cable going from the 75 amp powerpole distribution block to the 1296 amp and some minor SWR. We belive the voltage drop plus the swr is causing it to trip the high swr relay. So we believe we have temporarily alleviated that problem by adding a short piece of coax in line .
Upon testing the 900 mhz amplifier we got a whopping 0 watts out. Upon further investigation we found a minor mishap in a set of pins being in the wrong spot. After we fixed that we saw the bias voltage and had a few amps of current draw when the amplifier was keyed. We thought we had solved the problem. The end result was only 10 watts out. Unfortunately we can do atleast 30 out of the transverter by itself. We played with the drive levels but it didn’t seem to improve. So we are still looking into what is going on with this project. Hopefully we will get it figured out before we have to make a final decision on whether it stays or goes on Wednesday.
