Hello, This morning, I was able to get the amplifier up and running again. The plate tuning shaft need to be reattched to the tuning knob shaft and the tube grid circuit diodes were blown. So, not a catastrophic issue. A dollar's worth of components and some mechanical repair and we are ready to get back on the moon. 73 John N6VMO ----- Original Message ----- From: John Maetta To: sarcmembers@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Sent: Monday, December 28, 2009 12:46 PM Subject: [sarcmembers] Personal Equipment Damage Happy New Year to all, This morning I had a scheduled 2 Meter QSO/experiment with another amateur north of San Francisco. I was disappointed to find that someone had broken the plate tuning knob on my 2 meter amplifier. It appeared that someone had rotated the tuning knob to its extremes and snapped the shaft, but not before jamming the two plates together. It takes many turns of the tuning knob to get to each extreme and cause the plates to come in contact with each other. Unfortunately I discovered this very shortly after applying 3000V to the tube. Not a pleasant experience. My last visit to the clubhouse was on Oct. 11 and the amplifier was in good working order. More than likely the damage was not from a licensed, experienced amateur or club member. Although more than a couple of months have passed since my last visit, an examination of the clubs log yielded some clues as to what may have happened. The damage could have occurred during the JOTA exercise on Oct. 17. Youthful curiosity with knobs, combined with an inadvertent, momentary lack of a control operator or supervision in the radio room could have resulted in the mishap. I will begin troubleshooting and repair this week. Enough said... We did complete the experiment using my 2 meter brick amplifier. 73 John N6VMO