I am a ham radio guy going to build up a small amp for my home I find your builds very interesting and informative thanks for the video keep them coming
Thanks for the kind words! You know I only know that stuff because my Dad was into CB and worked in an Electronics shop when he was in High School. My Dad went to college but he was the first person in the family to every go to college. He was dirt poor. His Dad my grandfather had no money so he taught himself how to fix stuff. So when the TV set broke according to my Dad his Dad went to the library and got a book on TV repair and after about a month of reading and testing his Dad figured out what was bad bought the parts and fixed the tv. Likewise they never had a new vehicle until he was like 35 years old he always bought fixer upper's and repaired them. My Dad lived in Georgia for a while and he said when he needed help rebuilding a transmission he got on the CB and mentioned what he needed. He said a guy said he would help him rebuild it show him how since he had all the parts and it would cost him a case a beer. He lived in Columbus Ga. for a while and than Hinesvile near Savannah. Check this out when my Dad was 12 he put a new barrel on his rifle, built a tube amp from TV set's people tossed in the trash and rebuilt a motorcycle he found abandoned in a storm drain from a flood. His senior year he built a Toyota 4 cylinder engine to redline and build power up to 10,000RPM as his daily driver!!! LOL Just about all of the old school RCI2950 modifications where originally his work but he always posted them and gave them away for free online so he never got credit for any of it. I am living in the Dorms right now but once I get a place of my own maybe this Summer I want to get a new soldering station and maybe a Capacitor ESR tester that will allow me to test cap's in circuit and I need to build some amps! I am getting rusty!!! LOL My girlfriend has only known me since last Summer and does not know how late I can stay up when working on electronics and such she might get lonely and think I am cheating on her with the electronics! LOL Nothing like a glass of wine some old school Rock n Roll cranked up and the smell of fresh solder!!! My Dad laughs at my music choices since I like Rock and Roll from the 1970's-1990's and the fact that I like wine instead of beer or whisky. I know your an HG guy and your a Distributor but price wise it is hard to beat the Macom MRF454. I am thinking about trying the HG's since I have 8--9 of Brians Amplifier PCB's I need to build that is a lot of transistors to buy when you do not build amps fora living and are a poor working college kid! LOL I have had a job since I was 12 and my Mom and Dad are not paying for my college or for my gas or insurance or food I work and pay my own way so amplifier's are a hobby and come second, third, fourth etc....Nice to hear from you sorry just so busy with work and school!
I am glad to hear this....a lot of people are learning how to build thanks to me getting these HGs here for us.... I plan on doing teaching classes in the near future.
@@1883GotDown that would be awesome. I would love to learn how to build an amp. If you do please include numbers and values of the amps parts with suppliers. Unbelievable how you know this type of build. Thanks. I would pay for the paid channel if you started one, hint, hint.
When talking about the PEP Watts you mentioned coax length - some say coax length is a myth. I run 3 foot jumpers on my set-up radio to amp then to SWR - Power meter to antenna matcher to antenna. Another guy was talking on his radio changed the length of his jumper and you could see and hear the difference when he changed them. How do you actually figure the proper length to use?
William Colvin Go do some research on VP(Velocity Factor) Lengths can matter in certain situations and more with certain Amplifiers as well. Especially if they have Coax on the output going to the relay.
gate,,, I have an old texas star dx600 made like an 667 with mrf454s driver is not known, but there. I know the bias would be off. so it will need modification to 2879. what would you charge to convert it to 2879s hg's. I never considered the dei's. I would never consider dei's.
kf4dcy omg i have one here now man...i have hours and hours into it. Wait till you see what i have done to this thing. Bud it would be more money then it is worth because everything would have to be changed...that is the first 5 pill ever made. the driver is a srf2072 or a mrf455. that whole amps is designed around those motorols. i have been wanting one of these to add to my collection but it is all on you brother ill do it but it would almost best to just buy a new one or used one.
1883GotDown ,,, ok, thanks, I'll not modify it. and the driver pill must be a srf2072. because it's diameter is bigger than a mrf455. I'll just find another Toshiba 2879 dx500. I had intended to build a splitter/combiner box to run the two as a pair In a mobile. thanks again. maybe I'll find another dx500 for $182, like last time.
Atlas says in the owners manual that it is not made to test high power rf bjt's. That said I think they are fine for sorting and matching! It is expensive to get a curve tracer and scope! HIgh hfe is about durability more than anything else. True if it is close it is good enough. I think it is prob. fine to go with +- 10 hfe and you will likely be fine since they will balance out in short order one you put it into use as long as they are close! Do not quote me though!The reason I think this is so is because of Motorola. My Dad 's first amp on his 2950 was a MRF455 with double orange dot. According to him it was a beast. He said it was high tripple digits when he tested it. HE WAS DRIVING IT WITH HIS FIRST GENERATION rci 2950 into 1200w rated gray stinger coax 18 feet into a 102" whip with 6 inch aluminum bar extension on the back of his 1986 Toyota 4Runner in 1991 and people thought he was a base station especially on SSB. He went the opposite of hifi and went with pretty narrow audio but it was punchy as hell and full of highs according to him. This was back in 1991. According to him they performed so well it sounded and felt like he had 2 2879;s in it. This was before smd so he had replaced caps to tune the sound just like hi fi but going the other way a little bit. People always thought he had 2-3 times as much power.
I only run AB bias in amplifiers so that is the main reason for matching for biasing. That said the higher hfe is only going to matter on the peaks of what your saying. If you have heard someones audio coming in over someone keying on them and they are about the same distance to the listener and are not between each other that one with more gain, higher beta, lower imd if all else is equally in terms of wattage on a Bird, antenna height, swr etc.....will be heard. You will never see the difference on a watt meter though.
Up date for you. When the hfe falls bellow 11 life expectancy starts to drop off fast. So hfe's like 8, 6 etc.....are like a life expectancy.......If it drops too low ou get a diode or if you have any swr issues pop.....That is kind of what I have learned from BBI video's.....Goto go not much time left on my hour of phone usage from the Drill Sargent!
Most white paper's for these transistors have a test rig schematic and some of them will actually tell you that it is for testing beta gain in circuit. I think it was an old MRF485 or maybe it was Phillips BLF97 I was looking at that said that but I could be wrong. It was in the fine print that is normally unreadable or missing from most of the PDF documents I see online. I doubt they would test at the limit since their limit is lower than the Toshiba 2SC2879 they are trying to mimic and on top of that they do not have an official white paper of their own it is basically lifted from Toshiba's product. Smart money is not on volting HG transistors! Also the Atlas hfe tester is not the gold standard in the industry no factory worth a plug nickle would use one to official test their transistors for sorting. In fact the Atlas tester would not be allowed in a court of law either since it is not easily calibrated for annual certification. It is fine for shop use for general box building. I would worry about the differing hfe number's so long as all matched set's are in the same ball park. hfe is not an absolute especially when it is tested with low voltage and low current with a hand held low cost unit. Plus I would suspect the OEM would over rate the hfe since hfe is to a bipolar transistor what multiplication factor is to a vacuum tube and more is better assuming cost is not the primary issue. A Bird 43 is not the tool to see the difference between a low beta MRF455 sold as an MRF458 and a high beta MRF455. First the resolution is non-exhistant on a Bird and the buffering is too extreme to how the difference no matter if it is on CW/PEP/RMS you need a pretty good spectrum analyzer or a scope with a decent time transform function to mimic an older spectrum analyzer and it would need to be triggered or your eye would miss it. If you look at it on a curve tracer it would look different. Many guys sort through transistors with a curve tracer for cheap general purpose transistors like in the receive of the radio for really important customers or for themselves instead of just tossing any old 2999 or whatever it is in the radio and a few shcocktty's! Oops I responded 3 minutes in sorry. I should have watched the entire video! LOL I am on break though! LOL
buckaroobonsi555 Good to hear from you man...i tell you what i can always look forward to your well detailed and sophisticated comments. this was some great material that you left on this comment my friend and it still blows my mind at the age that you are at how much you understand if I understood just what I understand now at your age I would probably have hey shop that is 10 stories tall comma $18,000 plus Spectrum analyzer, and be building the PA's with the multiple output filtering. Again thanks brother for stopping by.
Jason Hernandez yes sir me either :) just continue to have patience with me Big Brother I'm doing all I can ever hear without Russian cuz I'm American LOL I'm using voice to speech on my phone and I course I didn't mean to Russian like the country I meant rushing but I thought I'd leave it because I accidentally made a joke
Casey, I don't always agree with everything that the GateKeeper says... but I didn't "blast" anyone. So go whine somewhere else... nobody likes to see a grown man cry.
1883GotDown I am so glad that we finally have a preamp that can bring the voice instead of all the white noise and make a Clarity of the voice that is such a cool factor to have and looking very forward to enjoying they call me 409 and Southeastern Arizona
telstar u straight up said he got an a for effort and a f for execution. ive told u more than once quit bashin folks, focus ur time on makin quality products. if u cant do that turn off the lights and go home
I am a ham radio guy going to build up a small amp for my home I find your builds very interesting and informative thanks for the video keep them coming
Thanks for the kind words! You know I only know that stuff because my Dad was into CB and worked in an Electronics shop when he was in High School. My Dad went to college but he was the first person in the family to every go to college. He was dirt poor. His Dad my grandfather had no money so he taught himself how to fix stuff. So when the TV set broke according to my Dad his Dad went to the library and got a book on TV repair and after about a month of reading and testing his Dad figured out what was bad bought the parts and fixed the tv. Likewise they never had a new vehicle until he was like 35 years old he always bought fixer upper's and repaired them. My Dad lived in Georgia for a while and he said when he needed help rebuilding a transmission he got on the CB and mentioned what he needed. He said a guy said he would help him rebuild it show him how since he had all the parts and it would cost him a case a beer. He lived in Columbus Ga. for a while and than Hinesvile near Savannah. Check this out when my Dad was 12 he put a new barrel on his rifle, built a tube amp from TV set's people tossed in the trash and rebuilt a motorcycle he found abandoned in a storm drain from a flood. His senior year he built a Toyota 4 cylinder engine to redline and build power up to 10,000RPM as his daily driver!!! LOL Just about all of the old school RCI2950 modifications where originally his work but he always posted them and gave them away for free online so he never got credit for any of it. I am living in the Dorms right now but once I get a place of my own maybe this Summer I want to get a new soldering station and maybe a Capacitor ESR tester that will allow me to test cap's in circuit and I need to build some amps! I am getting rusty!!! LOL My girlfriend has only known me since last Summer and does not know how late I can stay up when working on electronics and such she might get lonely and think I am cheating on her with the electronics! LOL Nothing like a glass of wine some old school Rock n Roll cranked up and the smell of fresh solder!!! My Dad laughs at my music choices since I like Rock and Roll from the 1970's-1990's and the fact that I like wine instead of beer or whisky. I know your an HG guy and your a Distributor but price wise it is hard to beat the Macom MRF454. I am thinking about trying the HG's since I have 8--9 of Brians Amplifier PCB's I need to build that is a lot of transistors to buy when you do not build amps fora living and are a poor working college kid! LOL I have had a job since I was 12 and my Mom and Dad are not paying for my college or for my gas or insurance or food I work and pay my own way so amplifier's are a hobby and come second, third, fourth etc....Nice to hear from you sorry just so busy with work and school!
Thank you for this very informative video. I'm learning how to build amps and you have helped me understand what to do correctly. Thanks.
I am glad to hear this....a lot of people are learning how to build thanks to me getting these HGs here for us.... I plan on doing teaching classes in the near future.
@@1883GotDown that would be awesome. I would love to learn how to build an amp. If you do please include numbers and values of the amps parts with suppliers. Unbelievable how you know this type of build. Thanks. I would pay for the paid channel if you started one, hint, hint.
When talking about the PEP Watts you mentioned coax length - some say coax length is a myth. I run 3 foot jumpers on my set-up radio to amp then to SWR - Power meter to antenna matcher to antenna. Another guy was talking on his radio changed the length of his jumper and you could see and hear the difference when he changed them. How do you actually figure the proper length to use?
William Colvin Go do some research on VP(Velocity Factor) Lengths can matter in certain situations and more with certain Amplifiers as well. Especially if they have Coax on the output going to the relay.
gate,,, I have an old texas star dx600 made like an 667 with mrf454s driver is not known, but there. I know the bias would be off. so it will need modification to 2879. what would you charge to convert it to 2879s hg's. I never considered the dei's. I would never consider dei's.
kf4dcy omg i have one here now man...i have hours and hours into it. Wait till you see what i have done to this thing. Bud it would be more money then it is worth because everything would have to be changed...that is the first 5 pill ever made. the driver is a srf2072 or a mrf455. that whole amps is designed around those motorols. i have been wanting one of these to add to my collection but it is all on you brother ill do it but it would almost best to just buy a new one or used one.
1883GotDown ,,, ok, thanks, I'll not modify it. and the driver pill must be a srf2072. because it's diameter is bigger than a mrf455. I'll just find another Toshiba 2879 dx500. I had intended to build a splitter/combiner box to run the two as a pair In a mobile. thanks again. maybe I'll find another dx500 for $182, like last time.
kf4dcy which atlas test micro caps and resistor
how much is a 16pill repill with Hg?
shoot me an email, threemanpro at the gmail.com
Atlas says in the owners manual that it is not made to test high power rf bjt's. That said I think they are fine for sorting and matching! It is expensive to get a curve tracer and scope! HIgh hfe is about durability more than anything else. True if it is close it is good enough. I think it is prob. fine to go with +- 10 hfe and you will likely be fine since they will balance out in short order one you put it into use as long as they are close! Do not quote me though!The reason I think this is so is because of Motorola. My Dad 's first amp on his 2950 was a MRF455 with double orange dot. According to him it was a beast. He said it was high tripple digits when he tested it. HE WAS DRIVING IT WITH HIS FIRST GENERATION rci 2950 into 1200w rated gray stinger coax 18 feet into a 102" whip with 6 inch aluminum bar extension on the back of his 1986 Toyota 4Runner in 1991 and people thought he was a base station especially on SSB. He went the opposite of hifi and went with pretty narrow audio but it was punchy as hell and full of highs according to him. This was back in 1991. According to him they performed so well it sounded and felt like he had 2 2879;s in it. This was before smd so he had replaced caps to tune the sound just like hi fi but going the other way a little bit. People always thought he had 2-3 times as much power.
I am looking to buy a set of 4 or 8 toshiba 2sc2290s i dont know how to get ahold of you
Excellent video Gatekeeper! Love the hands free.....
The manufacture likely tests them at rated/max voltage and possibly more current with it heatsinked.
throttle bottle good thinking. they atleast test close to the biased conduction angel i would think. not sure how close but you could be right
I only run AB bias in amplifiers so that is the main reason for matching for biasing. That said the higher hfe is only going to matter on the peaks of what your saying. If you have heard someones audio coming in over someone keying on them and they are about the same distance to the listener and are not between each other that one with more gain, higher beta, lower imd if all else is equally in terms of wattage on a Bird, antenna height, swr etc.....will be heard. You will never see the difference on a watt meter though.
Up date for you. When the hfe falls bellow 11 life expectancy starts to drop off fast. So hfe's like 8, 6 etc.....are like a life expectancy.......If it drops too low ou get a diode or if you have any swr issues pop.....That is kind of what I have learned from BBI video's.....Goto go not much time left on my hour of phone usage from the Drill Sargent!
man you feel like you are on a boat and getting motion sickness watchn this video
There tester puts a bigger load on the pills than the altas tester will do that is the reason for the higher gain #.
brian hatfield yes sir
Most white paper's for these transistors have a test rig schematic and some of them will actually tell you that it is for testing beta gain in circuit. I think it was an old MRF485 or maybe it was Phillips BLF97 I was looking at that said that but I could be wrong. It was in the fine print that is normally unreadable or missing from most of the PDF documents I see online. I doubt they would test at the limit since their limit is lower than the Toshiba 2SC2879 they are trying to mimic and on top of that they do not have an official white paper of their own it is basically lifted from Toshiba's product. Smart money is not on volting HG transistors! Also the Atlas hfe tester is not the gold standard in the industry no factory worth a plug nickle would use one to official test their transistors for sorting. In fact the Atlas tester would not be allowed in a court of law either since it is not easily calibrated for annual certification. It is fine for shop use for general box building. I would worry about the differing hfe number's so long as all matched set's are in the same ball park. hfe is not an absolute especially when it is tested with low voltage and low current with a hand held low cost unit. Plus I would suspect the OEM would over rate the hfe since hfe is to a bipolar transistor what multiplication factor is to a vacuum tube and more is better assuming cost is not the primary issue. A Bird 43 is not the tool to see the difference between a low beta MRF455 sold as an MRF458 and a high beta MRF455. First the resolution is non-exhistant on a Bird and the buffering is too extreme to how the difference no matter if it is on CW/PEP/RMS you need a pretty good spectrum analyzer or a scope with a decent time transform function to mimic an older spectrum analyzer and it would need to be triggered or your eye would miss it. If you look at it on a curve tracer it would look different. Many guys sort through transistors with a curve tracer for cheap general purpose transistors like in the receive of the radio for really important customers or for themselves instead of just tossing any old 2999 or whatever it is in the radio and a few shcocktty's!
Oops I responded 3 minutes in sorry. I should have watched the entire video! LOL I am on break though! LOL
buckaroobonsi555 Good to hear from you man...i tell you what i can always look forward to your well detailed and sophisticated comments. this was some great material that you left on this comment my friend and it still blows my mind at the age that you are at how much you understand if I understood just what I understand now at your age I would probably have hey shop that is 10 stories tall comma $18,000 plus Spectrum analyzer, and be building the PA's with the multiple output filtering. Again thanks brother for stopping by.
Well you can do more hand's free now you can get down Gatekeeper.
Get all the way down lol yeh just gotta get her out there to hold the camera lol
Great video but, your head aparatus is making me dizzy!!!...lol 😵
nice can't wait to see what you do with my galaxy 44v and see how it drives my four pill I sent you ...
Jason Hernandez yes sir me either :) just continue to have patience with me Big Brother I'm doing all I can ever hear without Russian cuz I'm American LOL I'm using voice to speech on my phone and I course I didn't mean to Russian like the country I meant rushing but I thought I'd leave it because I accidentally made a joke
I believe I sent you a email.....need a 250 improvement
Small Block sorry for the delay on getting back to you big brother it has been crazy busy. i wil respond to your email ASAP...thanks bud.
gatekeeper,Telstar electronics is blasting you on FB. seems that's all those dude do, blast other builders!!
hopefully not in a bad way huh?
Casey, I don't always agree with everything that the GateKeeper says... but I didn't "blast" anyone. So go whine somewhere else... nobody likes to see a grown man cry.
1883GotDown
I am so glad that we finally have a preamp that can bring the voice instead of all the white noise and make a Clarity of the voice that is such a cool factor to have and looking very forward to enjoying they call me 409 and Southeastern Arizona
telstar u straight up said he got an a for effort and a f for execution. ive told u more than once quit bashin folks, focus ur time on makin quality products. if u cant do that turn off the lights and go home
Might be sending u my 10 pill amp to put hg’s in it
Should be in 40s