Our new A2000
Dummy load is in production. We've shipped the first two production runs.
WMØL, Tom, has this to say about his A2000
"The new dummy load is working great also. I use it quite a bit. More than I thought I would. I found that pre tuning the amp in to the dummy load is much easier. I don't have to worry about the time limit anymore. Then a quick touch up with the antenna switched in. The new dummy load is worth every penny I paid for it."
2000 Watts until the cows come home!
20,000 Watts for 10 seconds! - pretty impressed? Well, how about 2,000 watts until the cows come home?
Not much electronics. Just some heavy duty, air cooled railroad resistors and a matching network in a box with two heavy duty fans.
Simple Design that should last a lifetime. Here are some pictures of the performance of the Alpha A2000 Dummy Load:  The text is a bit difficult to read, but the yellow line at the bottom, slightly slanting up is the SWR of the dummy load plotted on an HP Network Analyzer. The SWR at 1.8 Mhz is the arrow in the bottom left and measures 1.01:1, the next arrow to the right is 14.175 Mhz and measures 1.06:1, and the third arrow - the one in the middle of the screen is 30 Mhz and measures 1.15:1. And, the sweep ends at 54 Mhz and measures right around 1.3:1. Available NOW at $795 |
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Quotes from 2 new 9500 customers -
From Bob, AA6VB
"Just wanted to let you know that the tip you gave on getting that beast of a transformer into the amp did the trick. It works perfectly. You make a very fine piece of equipment. It's really fun to use and is worth every penny!"
From Jim, K8RQ
"This is a excellent amplifier, best I have ever used." |
Product Availability?
Everything is in stock!
RIGHT NOW:
9500 - in stock
8410 - in stock
8406 - in stock
Specific product availability is listed on the front page of the website, as is turnaround times for our repair department.
And, as always, the most up to date information on the happenings at the company are listed there too. Check it out at:
Thanks
for being so committed to a great brand, a hard working group of people, and our great hobby.
Call us if we can help you
:
303-473-9232
The folks at Alpha:
Steve, WA2NFR
Michael, AA6DY
Glenn, AEØQ
Brad, KØHM
Carey, KXØR
Molly, WØMOM
Gordon, WØRUN
Kathy, KB2HDT
Tom, W2CO
Petar
Pam
Patricia
Carol
Mary
Mike Adell
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Letter from the President, Steve Farkas, WA2NFR
"A quick update on the tuner: Ten production units are being built right now. Forty will follow next month. Then it will be full speed to fill the entire backlog. Hardware is done, Software is almost done. We're working on cleaning things up so we can ship our DreamTuner!
But, still work to do, so I'm getting back to it. I hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving, and we are looking forward to a wonderful end of the year and an incredible 2013.
All the best to our ham friends,
Steve, WA2NFR |
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Meet Patricia Karich - the parts lady...
 | | Patricia talking to a customer |
Many of you speak with Patricia Karich when you call into our office. She is our first line of communication with the customers. Patricia was born in Malaysia, where she learned to speak 3 different languages, and immigrated to the United States in 2000. She met her American husband here in 2002 and is very happily married. She has 4 children and 1 grandchild who is the apple of her eye. She also enjoys volunteering for a variety of community services in the Longmont area.
We are delighted to have Patricia as part of our team. She takes the pressure off the office staff by dealing with any and all issues that she is able to resolve - she has become our go-to parts shipper!
She has certainly been great for morale, as she is a team player and leads the way in organizing potlucks to celebrate holidays and staff birthdays.
Patricia is looking forward to one day obtaining her amateur radio license. She is a credit to our team!
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Letter from the Vice President of Sales, Molly Hardman, WØMOM
Things are picking up around the office...
It's hard to believe the Festive Season and the end of the year are really approaching when you live in Colorado and the temperature was almost 70 F the day before Thanksgiving! In spite of that, or wherever you live, now is the time to start thinking about getting a new wattmeter or a dummy load for an end of the year gift. We have everything (except tuners) in stock and ready to go out of the door. If you're in the market for a new amplifier, I recommend you call soon whilst we have amplifiers in stock. It's hard to go worng with an amplifier that is built in the US and that garners the comments you see from our customers.
It's also time for us to start planning our travel schedule for next year, beginning with Frostfest and Orlando in February. Last year we had a BIG snowstorm in early February and my flight to Frostfest was cancelled - along with about 600 other flights from Denver on that day, so it isn't all sunshine and 60+ degree days in Colorado! I'm going to attempt to expand the number of hamfests that we go to next year so please let me know where else you think we should go. Having Patricia in the office as my backup when I am out of town will make things run much more smoothly!
73 de Molly, WØMOM
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Letter from Gordon Hardman, WØRUN
Details, Details - it's what makes an Alpha Amplifier the best amp in the world. Today we talk about parts that fail you!
It's not what most people expect and it certainly isn't something that we write about often, BUT, every now and again we are blind-sided by parts that fail to live up to our standards. We are fortunate at Alpha as we have a better than 40 year history of building amplifiers and of choosing and purchasing parts that work in our demanding environment. Unfortunately, sometimes things change....
Over the past 10 - 12 years we have run into parts that always "used to work" and now suddenly they don't. An example from around 2006 or so was the padding capacitors that we use on 160 and 80 m. We had been purchasing the same parts for years when suddenly the pad caps started failing in burn-in. They sure looked the same as before and they came from the same supplier - we eventually determined that we had for years been the beneficiaries of capacitors that exceeded their ratings. As time progressed and the manufacturer needed to improve their margins, they cut back the rating on the capacitors and we had to change - we now use pad caps that are rated at 18 kV and they don't fail any more.
We have a similar parts issue that has reared its head on the 9500. Over the past few months, some of you have called in with Fault 14 - plate voltage too high. We have now determined that the 1 M ohm resistors that we have used in the HV metering circuitry for the past 20+ years and on half a dozen different models of amplifier are no longer up to our task. Effective in October, we have switched from those familiar resistors to ones that have a better rating. We think this was another case where the resistors we had used for so long, are no longer meeting the same ratings as before. Anyone with an amp built in the last 3 years is welcome to contact us for replacement resistors or call to get an RA if you would prefer that we replace them for you. Bear in mind that the failure rate has been below 10%, but it's not something that we're prepared to put up with and hence the new (and of course more expensive) resistors are now standard on all of our amplifiers.
73, Gordon, WØRUN
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Letter from Brad Focken, KØHM
 AC Plugs and Wiring??? This will keep you on the edge of your seat.
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An even more mundane topic is on my mind this month.
AC plugs and wiring.
We recently had a customer whose new 8410 just turned off while sitting there. How to diagnose? What was the problem? One of the 20 A ceramic fuses had blown - BTW - the only way you KNOW a fuse has blown is to measure it - looking at it or shaking it doesn't count. The fuse was replaced and the amp still wouldn't turn on - fortunately with our new amps you can debug via the serial or USB port on the back. Any time the amp is plugged in to the AC line, the 5 V supply in the amp will be powered and the micro processor(s) in the amp will be up and running.
Unfortunately, we couldn't get anything out of the micro in this case. A lot of debugging and continuity checks eventually led us to the offending power plug. Turns out that in this case, although everything looked normal, the problem lay outside of the amplifier.
Remember that there is a lot of thermal cycling that goes on in the plug - each time the amp is turned on and is in use and then back off again. This will be exacerbated if the gage of the wire leading up to the plug is now quite up to par. We don't usually see this problem in the lab because each amp onto the bench requires a plug to be attached and then removed again.
Just as we recommend that you blow the dust out of your amp (and particularly from the tube fins) at least on an annual basis, we also recommend that you take your plug apart and tighten the screws in the plug before putting everything back into operation.
It is afterall, considerably less expensive to tighten the screws in your plug than it is to replace the tubes in your amp because you keep blowing fuses.
Anyway, back to work. We've got a constant flow of preowned and new amps flowing through our department all the time.
73's Brad, KØHM
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As always, you can get a FREE Alpha Baseball cap with your Call Sign embroidered on the back for posting a review on eHam.net
 Go to eham.net and post a review on any of our Amplifiers, send us a note through the "CONTACT US" tab on the front of the website and we'll send you an embroidered Baseball Cap. Thousands of people have these caps!
List Price: $15.00
Our Price: ZERO
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