Hi Paul:
It would not hurt to do some trouble shooting on the HTX-100 to see if the
final is bad. If it is then I would say yea, that rig does need a fan. I
usually go with a ten second rule where you place you hand on the heat sink.
If you cannot hold it there for ten seconds then it is too hot. It should be
repairable if it is either way unless there is something major wrong.
I hope you get the chance to roll your own beacon either modifying a discarded
or cheap trashed out CB or build your own design. It really brought the
enjoyment level up for me.
Mark, KA9SZX
On Tuesday, May 31, 2016 9:37 PM, Paul N. Gayet AA1SU <AA1SU@xxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Had some action here with the Beacon radio set up over the three day holiday
weekend. The radio here is a Realistic Shack HTX-100 set to the 5 watt output
setting. It is keyed by an original N0XAS Picokeyer built inside a Altoids
Chewing Gum tin. The antenna is a vertical strapped to the chimney of the
house, about 35' up. I got the keyer in an estate sale last year. The radio
was an estate find, too. Lately, I've had a small cooling fan blowing across
the heatsink of the radio.
On Saturday, I turned it off for a while to check 10 Meters during the CQ WW
WPX contest. Ten was dead. I was also doing other stuff during the day,
including testing out a two radio set up for Field Day, so I didn't rack up too
many QSOs. On Sunday morning, I hastily turned the Beacon back on, and headed
off to work at my part-time job. I forgot to turn on the fan. When I got
home, I had a nice email QSL report from Eric KD9ELU in Dupo, IL. I was 579
at 1640z. Later in the evening, I looked at the radio, and the LEDs for the
power output were not lit. They were lit when I got home from work. After
some checking, I determined that the radio was just putting out miliwatts. I
could hear it on another radio in the same room, but it was not budging the
watt meter. BTW, this is the radio that I complained about here a few months
back because it had a backwave. There was some talk of changing a capacitor,
but another ham wrote that it would not fix the backwave, which cannot be heard
more than a mile away from one's QTH anyway.
Monday - So this gave me an excuse to put my other 10 Meter radio into
service. I've had a Uniden President HR2510 for quite some time that I never
really did much with. It has a variable power modification knob on it (came
that way - honest). I can vary the power from about 6 watts to 25 watts. I
was testing with a Micronta SWR/Power Meter (came with the radio). However, I
encountered more bad news when I went to key it up with the Picokeyer. I could
hear a radio sidetone, but the radio would not go into transmit. It would
transmit with a straight key. I thought something must be wrong with the 1/8"
mono cable that I was using, and messed around with other cables and adapters
for several minutes. At some point, I decided to check the voltage on the 3
volt coin cell battery in the keyer. It was at 2.6 volts. I changed the
battery, and the radio started to TX. I rechecked the HTX-100 - still dead. I
set up the HR2510 for the 6 watt setting.
Today (Tuesday), I was spotted by Dave K9QU, also in IL, on this reflector.
BTW, when I put the HTX-100 into receive on Sunday for testing, I could
faintly hear a CW signal on my frequency. It went on for so long with out
repeating that I thought it might be a QSO in progress. Then I thought, not
too likely here, so I strained to copy the call sign. I eventually did, and
found that he is assigned a frequency just above mine. I blame my radio for
this, not his. The HTX-100 is such a crappy radio, I often hear CW signals in
two places. What's that called? An image problem? Anyway, I thought it would
worth mentioning because of all the talk about the length of Beacon messages
here on the reflector lately.
Sorry for rambling on. I guess I really wanted to document this phase of the
Beacon. It was new in October 2015. First it was the HTX-100, then I tried
the Icom IC-756 Pro III for a while, but went back to the dedicated radio to
save on electricity, and to free up the base station. I guess I'll end this
with a question to the group.
Do you think leaving the cooing fan off contributed to the failure of the
HTX-100?
--
73
Paul N. Gayet AA1SU
ARRL Vermont Section Manager
AA1SU@xxxxxxxx
FISTS #4028
