In article ,
"Michael White" wrote:
I just got a very nice Yaesu FL-2100B, running two 572Bs in parallel. It
works great, loads 0right up, and put out about 600 watts of RF key down on
20 meters.
I typically run it at 300 watts by reducing the drive from my exciter, and
run SSTV a lot. After about a minute at 300 watts the plates of both tubes
glow a pretty bright red. It's not so noticable in daylight, but at night in
a darkened shack it's quite bright, a cherry red.
Idle current is correct. The antenna shows an SWR of 1.5 at my operating
frequency. I am not using a tuner between the amp and the antenna.
Is this glow normal? My tubes have the heavy graphite plates. They only glow
after a minute of key down CW. On SSB, or keyed with no drive, they do not
glow.
Any help will be appreciated. This is my first experience with this tube.
Thanks.
Mike, N4PDY
I would probably back off to 1/4 of the rated power as an absolute max
since the amp is rated 600 watts on SSB. I probably would run it at 75
or 80 watts for SSTV to let it run at less than flat out.