Buch & Tom,
You've said something vital for sure, I'm more than thankfull for my Sue
constantly for so many reasons!

I've run into several astron supplies with poor or no regulation over the
years I believe I remember one with a failed driver as Buch mentions, but
another we never could figure out what failed.  The LM723 was always a
suspect first off. Of course they didn't socket the chip, but we did when
repairing them. I believe we also may have put a small heat sink on the
replacement 723.

tom Fowle WA6IVG

On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 12:32:13PM -0500, Tom Behler wrote:
> Very nice story, Butch.
> 
> Not only is it informative, but it drives home the point that those of us
> who have good spouses really need to appreciate them for who they are.
> 
> Maybe there's a bit of a Thanksgiving theme coming through here, but it's
> something I always try to be mindful of.
> 
> Regarding my Astron RS35, I think I'm going to have one of our more
> technicallly-inclined local club members look at mine with me, so we can
> maybe figure out what might be going wrong.  I just think it's behaving a
> bit more erradically than it should be.
> 
> Tom Behler: KB8TYJ
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: For blind ham radio operators [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> On Behalf Of Butch Bussen
> Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2015 7:43 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: Kenwood PS53 Power Supply Manual
> 
> I have occasionally had to repair astron supplies.  One particular  time
> comes to mind.  It was the day before my 60th Birthday and I was living in
> Las Vegas at the time.  A good friend of mine, Fred, K9GAJ, had lived in
> Vegas for several years and we enjoyed each other's company helping each
> other with repairs, antennas and so forth.  Unfortunately for me, he had
> retired and moved to New Mexico a couple years before this incident.  We had
> a near lightning strike and my 35 amp astron died.  I did have a spair, but
> kept grumbling, "I wish Fred was here, he'd help me fix this thing."  I'm a
> good trouble shooter, but not good at soldering on pc boards.
> 
> The next day was my 60th birthday and Libbie told me she might be late from
> work as she had a meeting.  I never gave it a thought, although I should
> have, she never stayed late.  Anyhow, she came home at normal time. 
> A couple minutes later, there was a knock at the door and I figured u p s or
> some body.  I opened the door and Fred said "happy birthday."  I just stood
> there.  Finally Libbie asked me if I was going to let him in.  One heck of a
> surprise for my birthday which Libbie had put together.  All the time I was
> grumbling about Fred not being there any more, she just smiled as she knew
> he'd be at my door the next day.  Hard to believe she's been gone 5 years
> this December.  She was always doing cool stuff like that, which is why I
> miss her so much.  Well, we began working on the supply and kept running in
> circles.  Turned out to be a simple fix once we found it. 
> We quickly determined the driver transister was bad.  We replaced that, and
> still no output.  There is a series resister from the emiter of the driver,
> a ten ohm as I recall, to the base of the pass transisters.  Fred misread it
> as a thousand ohms and oddly enough, that is what it checked with an ohm
> meter.  I should have caught on that that was way to high a value for where
> it was in the circuit.  Once we replaced it with a ten ohm, the supply was
> back to normal.  We both should have caught that one much soonner than we
> did.  He kept misreading the colors and I kept thinking 1 k was correct.
> 
> Those supplies are fairly trouble free, but lightning or a power lline spike
> can get the 723 or a transister.  If I remember right, the driver was bad,
> but we totally kept overlooking that pesky resister.
> 
> 
> 
> 73
> Butch
> WA0VJR
> Node 3148
> Wallace, ks.