Alpha 78 Rehab

The ARRL Contest Update for April 28, 2010

There is one less Voo-Dude contester following the untimely passing of Vince Thompson K5VT. Diagnosed very recently with leukemia, Vince was unable to tolerate the resulting therapy. As a member of the Voo-Dude contest team, Vince was instrumental in putting West African multipliers in all of our logs. In addition, he was a friendly face at hamfests and conventions, never lacking for a humorous remark. He is already missed by us all. (Thanks, Roger G3SXW and Tony N7BG)

Vince sold me this Alpha 78 after it had made several trips to Africa with him.

Back on the Air today!  Seems to be solid again and the clean blower is really Blowing NOW!

Last week the Alpha was put on the operating desk and a 45 min contact on SSB worked fine so we hooked it up for QSK CW and got ready for the CW Contest.  It worked perfect for 125 or so contacts running QSK with the MK-V we turned it off to sleep and when we woke up the amp did not come back on line! We are now working on it some more.

The manual says to check;
  Input Cable
  T/R input relay
  Input circuit

All of this seemed to be ok be we did find a lot of dirt in the blower so we tried to get it apart to check everything.

Right now my guess is the Filiments are not coming on!

The 'black pin' on the Molex connector is the Filament winding from the transformer.

The Blower come away from the motor with two screews on the inside of the blower fan.  Washed it in the wifes kitchen sink.  The gunk was 1/8" to 1/4" all inside so the airflow should be improved.