[Flexradio] Ameritron AL-1200 WARNING!!!

[Gary]

That's not good news at all.   I use an AL1200.  Are you saying that I
cannot safely run 100w to drive it, when the amp will easily accept 140w of
drive?  I, for one, will not back down drive power to the amp.  Shouldn't
have to.  If it fries the RFIO board, then the rig will go back for a refund
instead of repair.  There is no reason that I can think of that this should
be an issue.  If someone out there can explain how this could happen, I am
all ears.  I use the amp most of the time.

Getting very nervous here.  Rig should be here next week.

73 de Gary - W9BS

-----Original Message-----
From: flexradio-bounces at flex-radio.biz
[mailto:flexradio-bounces at flex-radio.biz] On Behalf Of John Bingel
Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 1:52 PM
To: FlexRadio at flex-radio.biz
Subject: [Flexradio] Ameritron AL-1200 WARNING!!!

If you are driving an Ameritron 1200 with your FLEX-5000   "DO NOT" drive it
with 100 Watts as the Ameritron manual says it is designed for.
I don't know what the problem is, I had very little reflected power
indicated on the FLEX, but have now toasted two RFIO boards in the 5000.
 
The first failure appeared after using the amp on 75, later when switching
from 20M to 40M, with amp off, I lost receive on ANT1, ANT2 and ANT3. 
Receive on RX1 worked.
 
I received a new RFIO board from FLEX yesterday and installed it. 
Everything worked better than new.
EVEN my computer speakers weren't bothered by the RF.  I used radio about 4
hours last night.
 
This morning a friend was having trouble hearing me on 75 so I turned on the
amp after keying a few times the RFIO failed in same manner.
 
When I get fixed this time I will revert to almost never using the AMP.
 
Now that I know the problem I can work around it, however I see more
problems if one forgets to back off drive before using the AL-1200.
 
Two software fixes could help. 
 
1. In transmit setup along with TUNE level add settings for TX1 LEVEL, TX2
LEVEL & TX3 LEVEL.  One could then set drive level for amplifier and
When TX1 was selected in antenna you would get TX1 LEVEL.
 
2. In antenna make it so you can only select one of the TX1, TX2, & TX3 
external keying outputs.
 
 
John AD7DP
 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/pipermail/flexradio_flex-radio.biz/attachments/20
071204/37c9981c/attachment.html 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 1458 bytes
Desc: not available
Url :
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/pipermail/flexradio_flex-radio.biz/attachments/20
071204/37c9981c/attachment.jpe 
_______________________________________________
FlexRadio mailing list
FlexRadio at flex-radio.biz
http://mail.flex-radio.biz/mailman/listinfo/flexradio_flex-radio.biz
Archive Link: http://www.mail-archive.com/flexradio%40flex-radio.biz/
FlexRadio Knowledge Base: http://kb.flex-radio.com/
FlexRadio Homepage: http://www.flex-radio.com/