Problems With ALPHA 8410

[KO6WB]

Ken, it's outstanding that you have resolved your difficulties with your 8410. I know the folks at Alpha take pride in their workmanship and sometimes they need to be humbled by something bad happening to one of their products. I believe you got a lemon, one made on Monday morning before first coffee or one made late afternoon on Friday when the coffee wore off.
If this replacement amplifier fails after 3 weeks let us know but odds are you're going to be a happy camper from now on.
73
Gary

[AC0OB]

They actually sent me a brand-new amplifier last week. So far, the new amp works great!!

That is great to hear. Outstanding service for sure.

Maybe the first amp just had some "growing pains."

Let's hope your second amp will be more stable.

I would imagine Alpha is going over the first amp with a fine toothed comb.

73 and good luck!

Phil

[VK6ZGO]

 RE: Alpha (Dick Erhorn's) amplifiers:
1. used an oil-filled HV filter capacitor that was not designed to handle ripple current. so it heated. expanded, broke the seam and leaked.
2. used ceramic doorknob caps that were intended for coupling and bypass apps as low band padders in tank circuits. This resulted in excessive drift from capacitor dielectric heating.
3. failed to realize, along with Tom Rauch. that C-feedback can not be safely ignored in UHF-rated triodes.

Erhorn once complained to me that the had c. 150 bad 3CX800A7s in his shop that had a "Eimac manufacturing defect" - which turned out to be leakage from gold-sputtering from the grid -- which is a problem caused by inadequate amplifier engineering - not the tube mfg.
Attachment 90865

Rich,I'm only really commenting on (1)
It seems strange that they would have problems with oil-filled capacitors,as they are what was used in all the Broadcast & TV transmitters I worked on over many years.
These oil filled capacitors were made by reputable manufacturers & did not exhibit any such problems.
I may have had to replace one due to failure at some time,but if I did,I can't remember it.

It seems that there may be a source of such caps which do not meet standard specifications,& Alpha got stuck with some of them.
I guess that is a warning to all of us,not to take such things for granted!

[AG6K]

Rich,I'm only really commenting on (1)
It seems strange that they would have problems with oil-filled capacitors,as they are what was used in all the Broadcast & TV transmitters I worked on over many years.
These oil filled capacitors were made by reputable manufacturers & did not exhibit any such problems.
I may have had to replace one due to failure at some time,but if I did,I can't remember it.

It seems that there may be a source of such caps which do not meet standard specifications,& Alpha got stuck with some of them.
I guess that is a warning to all of us,not to take such things for granted!

 There are two types of oil filled capacitors: Those intended for continuous filter service and those intended for intermittent photo-flash service. The latter type has thinner foil and for a given rating is smaller than the type for filter service. The thinner the foil the higher the ESR and the higher the I²xR loss when ripple current is present. However, a flash service C can be used in filter service if it is derated to 60% of working V. Operating an intermittent flash service C at it's full V rating in filter service results in heating that eventually can cause failure of the seals. . . . In ordinary intermittent amateur radio use one might be able to get by with a flash rated C - but for contesting, probably not.
At one time Peter W. Dahl was selling surplus oil-filled caps. After purchasing 2 for a FWD I was building, I found out about the two types of oil filled caps - so I became suspicious and ran a ripple current test on them. They got hot -- confirming that they were flash caps. Peter refunded my $$. .
You are right about not taking things for granted.
It is my opinion that it is not good engineering practice to use a flash-rated C in filter service.

[VK6ZGO]

 There are two types of oil filled capacitors: Those intended for continuous filter service and those intended for intermittent photo-flash service. The latter type has thinner foil and for a given rating is smaller than the type for filter service. The thinner the foil the higher the ESR and the higher the I²xR loss when ripple current is present. However, a flash service C can be used in filter service if it is derated to 60% of working V. Operating an intermittent flash service C at it's full V rating in filter service results in heating that eventually can cause failure of the seals. . . . In ordinary intermittent amateur radio use one might be able to get by with a flash rated C - but for contesting, probably not.
At one time Peter W. Dahl was selling surplus oil-filled caps. After purchasing 2 for a FWD I was building, I found out about the two types of oil filled caps - so I became suspicious and ran a ripple current test on them. They got hot -- confirming that they were flash caps. Peter refunded my $$. .
You are right about not taking things for granted.
It is my opinion that it is not good engineering practice to use a flash-rated C in filter service.

This is really good information Rich!
73,VK6ZGO

[W3XAF]

You say that "ALPHA is a top-notch company with super service". REALLY!! Well, I went to Dayton, Ohio this May and went directly to the ALPHA Stand at the Hara Arena because Molly Hardman, the so-called Vice-President of ALPHA Sales, sent me an e-mail and invited me to "drop by" when I was in Dayton. I stood by Ms. Hardman for more than 90 minutes while she utterly ignored me and talked to everyone around her but never talked to me. My call sign was displayed very prominently on my hat and I know she recognized who I was. After being sent a total lemon that died on me after only three weeks of use and now after being totally ignored by Molly Hardman when I attempted to talk to her at Dayton, I give this firm and their employees a total ZERO in customer relations!! By the way, the second ALPHA 8410 that they shipped to me has been running perfectly for almost four weeks.

Something doesn't smell right about this whole story. This OM also gave the 8410 a ZERO rating in the amplifier section of Eham.net. 63 previous owners had given the amp a perfect 5.0 rating. His zero rating knocked the overall rating down to 4.9. I just happened to be following the Eham.net 8410 rating so I am familiar with this story. As a matter of fact, I had my control board go after about two months (I bought the 8410 new via HRO). I called Alpha the next day and they diagnosed the problem over the telephone. They sent me a new control board the very same day and I installed it in half an hour (just 1 solder connection). I really did not want to box the amplifier up and send it back to CO, so when the technician said I could swap the control board rather easily, I jumped at the offer. Actually, my LED wattmeter was dead, just like his, so he probably had his control board blow on him. God only knows what further damage he caused by replacing fuse after fuse. That is just dumb!

Alpha is a top notch company with super service, and they give a 4 year warranty on their amps which is the longest warranty offered by any amplifier manufacturer. The 4 year Alpha warranty is one of the reasons I bought my Alpha 8410 (I also get a fifth year of warranty coverage because I used my American Express card. They offer that as an inducement to use their card). Ameritron offers a 1 year warranty, for example, and Acom offers a 2 year warranty.

I installed my 8410's transformer and it uses three different Molex connectors. It's impossible to screw up.

Any piece of Amateur gear can have a failure. That's why the warranty and the reputation of the company are so important. This was an opportunity to let Alpha show what kind of customer service they provide when something does go wrong, and in my case it is a major reason I gave them a prefect 5.0 rating on Eham for their product.

W3XAF should have been on the phone with Alpha as soon as the first fuse blew instead of crying in multiple forums. How come he never answers when people ask what happened when he called Alpha? This story doesn't hold together. Facts really are stubborn things!

73,

Chris/NU1O

[W3XAF]

NO, the topic of this thread is how someone who spent $5,300 for an ALPHA Amplifier was sent a total lemon that self-destructed in only three weeks.

** REALITY CHECK **

The topic of this thread is about a ham who didn't have the common sense to stop transmitting when his amplifier started blowing fuses. It is NOT about Rich's 25 year old feud with the world!

Thank you.

[W3XAF]

[B]Hi Gary,

No, I didn't solve my "difficulties" with ALPHA. ALPHA solved all my problems by shipping me a brand-new 8410 Amp. The first one they shipped me was a LEMON. The one I have now is working just great. Unfortunately, the folks at ALPHA tried their best to place the blame on me for all the problems I had with the first amplifier. The technician's report was absolutely incredulous. First they tried to say that I was using a 115 volt AC plug on my 8410. Then they said that the 240-Volt wall outlet was really a 115-Volt wall outlet. Then they said that I probably caused all the failures by inputting more than 40 Watts into the ALPHA. They also suggested that my antennas caused all the problems. Then they wanted to know if I had tried to tune up using a dummy load instead of an antenna. Etc., etc., etc. They never once admitted that the amplifier I had was a LEMON.[/B]

Ken, it's outstanding that you have resolved your difficulties with your 8410. I know the folks at Alpha take pride in their workmanship and sometimes they need to be humbled by something bad happening to one of their products. I believe you got a lemon, one made on Monday morning before first coffee or one made late afternoon on Friday when the coffee wore off.
If this replacement amplifier fails after 3 weeks let us know but odds are you're going to be a happy camper from now on.
73
Gary

[AG6K]

[B]Hi Gary,

No, I didn't solve my "difficulties" with ALPHA. ALPHA solved all my problems by shipping me a brand-new 8410 Amp. The first one they shipped me was a LEMON. The one I have now is working just great. Unfortunately, the folks at ALPHA tried their best to place the blame on me for all the problems I had with the first amplifier. The technician's report was absolutely incredulous. First they tried to say that I was using a 115 volt AC plug on my 8410. Then they said that the 240-Volt wall outlet was really a 115-Volt wall outlet. Then they said that I probably caused all the failures by inputting more than 40 Watts into the ALPHA. They also suggested that my antennas caused all the problems. Then they wanted to know if I had tried to tune up using a dummy load instead of an antenna. Etc., etc., etc. They never once admitted that the amplifier I had was a LEMON.[/B]

 It is standard operating procedure - SOP - for human orgs to deny and blame others for their mistakes. The original Corvair automobile had a rollover problem that took years, a number of expensive injury lawsuits, and publication of an embarrassing book before GM would fix their design error. A friend was injured in a Corvair rollover.
 Another example of denial is a large religious org that initially tried to blame child victims for a centuries-old mistake that was of the org's own doing. 900 years ago when the mistake was made a man named Pete Comestor warned of the danger but nobody in the org payed any attention. Eventually this mistake cost the org $3,000,000,000 in out of court settlements and serious loss of street cred. . . . . Congrats to Pete C.
 Yet another example of denial is TL-922 bandswitch arcing across open contacts. For years Kenwood techs said it was due to TL-922 owners rapidly switching the bandswitch while transmitting at full power. How could any mfg be so clueless as to imagine that any Ham radio operator is really this stupid? . . . The cause of the arcing turned out to be the 0.3pF of feedback-C in the 3-500Zs. At the frequency of the TL-922's anode parasitic resonance c. 120MHz, 0.3pF has about 5000Ωs of reactance. Since 3-500Zs have been successfully used to build 144MHz push-pull amplifiers, is it any mystery that they can oscillate at 120MHz with a 5000Ω feedback path between the anode-output and the cathode-input? Duhhhhhh.
 There is no tube that does not have feedback-C --- yet some HF/MF amplifier engineers ignore this potential source of grief and do not take adequate measures to reduce VHF amplification to discourage parasitic VHF oscillation -- or incorporate glitch-protection to limit damage in case a parasitic oscillation ever pays a visitation. .

[W3XAF]

[B]I e-mailed Chris, NU1O, all the correspondence I had between me and ALPHA. About 12 e-mails. He didn't have the common courtesy to acknowledge any of my correspondence to him. It seems as if this person is an apologist for ALPHA and doesn't really want to hear any information that is negative about an ALPHA amplifier. He evidently gets his kicks by attacking any one who leaves negative information about ALPHA on this forum.[/B]

Something doesn't smell right about this whole story. This OM also gave the 8410 a ZERO rating in the amplifier section of Eham.net. 63 previous owners had given the amp a perfect 5.0 rating. His zero rating knocked the overall rating down to 4.9. I just happened to be following the Eham.net 8410 rating so I am familiar with this story. As a matter of fact, I had my control board go after about two months (I bought the 8410 new via HRO). I called Alpha the next day and they diagnosed the problem over the telephone. They sent me a new control board the very same day and I installed it in half an hour (just 1 solder connection). I really did not want to box the amplifier up and send it back to CO, so when the technician said I could swap the control board rather easily, I jumped at the offer. Actually, my LED wattmeter was dead, just like his, so he probably had his control board blow on him. God only knows what further damage he caused by replacing fuse after fuse. That is just dumb!

Alpha is a top notch company with super service, and they give a 4 year warranty on their amps which is the longest warranty offered by any amplifier manufacturer. The 4 year Alpha warranty is one of the reasons I bought my Alpha 8410 (I also get a fifth year of warranty coverage because I used my American Express card. They offer that as an inducement to use their card). Ameritron offers a 1 year warranty, for example, and Acom offers a 2 year warranty.

I installed my 8410's transformer and it uses three different Molex connectors. It's impossible to screw up.

Any piece of Amateur gear can have a failure. That's why the warranty and the reputation of the company are so important. This was an opportunity to let Alpha show what kind of customer service they provide when something does go wrong, and in my case it is a major reason I gave them a prefect 5.0 rating on Eham for their product.

W3XAF should have been on the phone with Alpha as soon as the first fuse blew instead of crying in multiple forums. How come he never answers when people ask what happened when he called Alpha? This story doesn't hold together. Facts really are stubborn things!

73,

Chris/NU1O