July 7, 2026
The drawback of running serious 6 meter power in a very small camper is that the fans make quite a racked. During my last grid activation trip the band died off and I decided to leave the station up and monitoring while I took a siesta. My most brilliant move was to unplug the amp's external fans for some peace and quiet. Zzzzzz!
The band came back to life, I resumed operating, and 30 minutes later something smelled really hot. I had forgotten to bring the cooling fans back on line. A day later in the last hour of the trip the amp said enough, went to 1/2 power ever so briefly, then rolled over and died. 😕
I took this as an opportunity to replace the MRF 1K50N LDMOS with a new ART1K9 device. A bit more overhead, and the MRF 1K50N has become "unobtainium" i.e. obsolete. Even some major folly can turn out well.
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| Great craftsmanship! The new W6PQL pallet sporting the ART1K9 LDMOS. |
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| 6 meter semi-homebrew amp all pieced back together and ready to go. |