strange Amidon T37-2 toroids
Posted: 23 Apr 2022, 13:46
Experiences:
Today I got a little smarter...
I now have a kit from newdiytech.com.
Since I had already waiting for the (unfortunately canceled) OE-DL Group buy and previously had very bad experiences with toroids from China (N7DDC-AT-100 project), I previously ordered all toroids from amidon.de for the (tr)uSDX . After i built the kit, the power and efficiency was bad.
At 12V 1.75W-2.5W and 30-40% efficiency depending on the band.
That was of course very unsatisfactory.
I then changed T2 from Amidon-toroid to kit-toroid with no improvement. Squeezing the coils didn't do much either. My wattmeter only starts at 2.5W and showed about 2.5 watts at 80m (strongest band), which the display also showed. So the efficiency was displayed almost correctly.
I had changed all BS170 from first "Fairchild" to "China" and now "Motorola", with not so big differences. That wasn't the breakthrough either.
All that remained was to fiddle around the toroids or replace them. And in the back of my mind I had Manuel's enthusiasm for the toroids of the kits. So today I changed first the two Toroids for 20m.
and bingo! At 20m at 12V, the power increased from 1.96W to 4.6W and the efficiency from 30.6% to 77% without further adjustment.
Loud relaxed sigh of relief!
The rest will follow soon, but I assume that was the breakthrough.
Actually, I would have expected less stress from the Amidon cores.
And now I share Manuel's enthusiasm for the toroids off the chinese kit. A big thumbs up.
Maybe this is also interesting for others.
Today I got a little smarter...
I now have a kit from newdiytech.com.
Since I had already waiting for the (unfortunately canceled) OE-DL Group buy and previously had very bad experiences with toroids from China (N7DDC-AT-100 project), I previously ordered all toroids from amidon.de for the (tr)uSDX . After i built the kit, the power and efficiency was bad.
At 12V 1.75W-2.5W and 30-40% efficiency depending on the band.
That was of course very unsatisfactory.
I then changed T2 from Amidon-toroid to kit-toroid with no improvement. Squeezing the coils didn't do much either. My wattmeter only starts at 2.5W and showed about 2.5 watts at 80m (strongest band), which the display also showed. So the efficiency was displayed almost correctly.
I had changed all BS170 from first "Fairchild" to "China" and now "Motorola", with not so big differences. That wasn't the breakthrough either.
All that remained was to fiddle around the toroids or replace them. And in the back of my mind I had Manuel's enthusiasm for the toroids of the kits. So today I changed first the two Toroids for 20m.
and bingo! At 20m at 12V, the power increased from 1.96W to 4.6W and the efficiency from 30.6% to 77% without further adjustment.
Loud relaxed sigh of relief!
The rest will follow soon, but I assume that was the breakthrough.
Actually, I would have expected less stress from the Amidon cores.
And now I share Manuel's enthusiasm for the toroids off the chinese kit. A big thumbs up.
Maybe this is also interesting for others.