On 2008-02-26, Ron Natalie wrote:
Jay Maynard wrote:
Good idea. One note: DO NOT TRANSMIT WITH THE ATTENUATOR IN THE LINE. You
WILL destroy it, and likely your transmitter's final amplifier as well if
you transmit for too long after destroying the attenuator.
While it may cook the attenuator, provided he's move on from vacuum
tubes, it's unlikely that a 12 or 24v driven transistor final is going
to burn up even if it's a complete mismatch.

Transmitting at full power into an open circuit - which is what you'd get
after burning up the attenuator - is about the worst thing you can do to a
final, especially a transistor one. Solid state finals are less forgiving
than tube finals, and abuse that would just make the tubes run hotter than
normal will burn up transistors quickly.
--
Jay Maynard, K5ZC http://www.conmicro.com
http://jmaynard.livejournal.com http://www.tronguy.net
http://www.hercules-390.org (Yes, that's me!)
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