THE MAKING OF MAX !
The Max Trons project (souped
up SB 220 linear Amplifier) began as a result of my running the
amp a little hard one night on CW. You know me troops, All
Meters To The Right – Geo! I burned up the plate
transformer one night so bad I had to take the amp out to the
garage because it was smoking up the house so bad! A few
weeks later my good friend Jerry Lipski (KB9GR) stopped by and
viewed the damaged piece of equipment. He then suggested we
rebuild the entire power supply but only BIGGER – BETTER
– FASTER!
Thus began a year and a half project to build an external power supply for the SB 220. My friend Jerry featured in picture 7 had access to motor winding parts so we decided to simply wind and cure our own plate and filament transformers. The plate transformer is a 12 tap transformer allowing me to regulate the plate voltage on the 3-500z tubes from 1700 to 4000 volts! The filament transformer has ¾ inch bus wire as the secondary winding capable of carrying 200 amps with no heat at all! With the added space in the RF deck of the SB 220, I then had room to add a 3rd 3-500z tube in parallel. This configuration gave me an easy 1500 watts out with 100 watts drive from my Ten Tec Corsair 2. Featured on this page are photos of the various stages of the project from the first formation of the cabinet, to the finished product, and finally a demo to some of my DX chasing buddies in our local radio club. Be assured Max cracks pile-ups even with a wire G5RV antenna at my new QTH. My extreme thanks to my friend Jerry Lipski for his helping hand and dedication to the project. We were both in the middle of raising a family at the time so we had to squeeze everything in between park visits, baseball games and bowling leagues. Thus the personal joke, “Paul has a game, Mary has to bowl, and Jeff needs a walk in the park!! We will have to finish this later”!! Later finally came and with it some 307 countries on my DXCC Award. Sure I could have bought an Alpha 78 but this was more fun! What an adventure! It goes down in my log as one of the best projects of my life. Thanks Jerry wherever you are!
Page Last Updated~ June 4, 2000
Midi~ Believe (Cher)