All things Alpha Amplifier

December 2013

The View From Operations from Kathy Foster-Patton, KB2HDT

First of all, I would like to offer a big congratulations and thank you to Glenn Pladsen, AE0Q, for the 15 years of dedicated service that he has spent working at Alpha Amplifiers! Glenn came to work at Alpha in September of 1998, and we are truly glad that he did. He is the resident expert on the 8410 and 8406, and does repairs on all of the legacy amplifiers that keep rolling in here. We are proud to have him on our team.

The second item I would like to address involves the software upgrades on the 9500's. Brad Focken, KØHM, is working as fast as he can on these upgrades. The new code, 3.03c, is now posted on our website. We encourage you to download it and do the upgrade yourself if you feel comfortable doing so. Make sure to unzip the file prior to loading it. After the upgrade, if you have tuning issues on 10 or 12 meters, please contact us.

73,

Kathy, KB2HDT

From the Alpha "Diplomatic" corner........

Best wishes to all of my friends, fellow amateurs and customers for a wonderful Festive Season.

I look forward to seeing many of you at a hamfest somewhere in the New Year.

73,

Molly, WØMOM

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
Your Price: ZERO

Product Availability?

RIGHT NOW

2 WEEK BACKLOG
9500
8410
8406
A2000
Wattmeters

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:

The Alpha Website

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,

Gordon, WØRUN,

Kathy, KB2HDT,

Petar, Pam, Mike A.

Carol KDØVCT

Seasons greetings from the team at RF Concepts/Alpha Amplifiers

Not being a normal contributor to our newsletter, occasionally having an opportunity to sit in front of the keyboard and speak to the tens of thousands of customers and fellow hams is a special treat for me. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank a very capable team of committed people for doing a fine job in a year that saw lots of change. I'd also like to welcome the hundreds of new customers we've had the pleasure of doing business with in 2013. All and all, I'd say it was a good year. We sold hundreds of amplifiers, dummy loads, and wattmeters, and had an opportunity to work on a couple of nice sized designs in the labs. We've come up with a couple of innovative projects that we'll be sharing with you in 2014, so stay tuned!

Happy Holidays, and we look forward to a wonderful 2014.

Now for some new business information:

Announcement One:

Long time employees of RF Concepts, Gordon Hardman and Brad Focken have become part owners of the company. Keeping a commitment made a while ago, on December 31, 2013, both Gordon and Brad will have fulfilled their performance requirements are are now full fledged, part owners of RF Concepts, Alpha Amplifiers. Congratulations to both Gordon and Brad and we look forward to making our partnership and our company better than ever.

Announcement Two:

When we bought Alpha in 2009, it was our decision to continue to service older 'legacy' amplifiers for as long as we could 1) obtain parts, 2) retain expertise. Many of the older amplifiers contain parts that are just no longer available - plain and simple. Additionally, the cost to obtain the remaining available parts has climbed steadily (especially in the last couple of years). We've been pondering this difficult decision for at least two years, and in March we wrote that we were going to stop servicing legacy amplifiers. Recently, after we posted the news on the website, we had a lot of comments from our customers. A lot of people were really upset, and I understand that compared to the existing arrangement of servicing anything we've ever built, any change is going to be viewed negatively. The truth is, it's incredibly difficult and expensive to service amplifiers that were built in the last century! In fact, I can't think of a single electronic equipment (or ham radio equipment) manufacturer that doesn't have an end of life policy. So, now we have one. We defined it and published it on our website HERE, but I'll give you a quick overview. We will continue to service our products 10 (ten) years after they were manufactured. The 87A and 8100 still fall under this end of life definition. We did hear your comments and modified our original position, so thanks to the people that shared their opinions.

And, of course you know that Schematics have ALWAYS been available, and there is lots of information on the Internet and specifically on our website to help you troubleshoot an amplifier.

Announcement Three:

In late 2009 when we began building Alpha products under the RF Concepts banner we lowered the prices on every product. Since then we have raised the price on only one product - the 8410 - and that price is still below the price as of August 2009! Unfortunately, we cannot say the same of our suppliers who have continued to alert us to their price increases each year, particularly towards each year-end. After four years of fixed sale prices, we needed to adjust them.

With this newsletter and on our web site we are announcing a price increase across our product line as of January 1st. All orders placed between now and the end of the month will be delivered at the currently listed prices, whether or not they ship before the end of 2013.

It's a pleasure to be part of a great community. Hams are like no one else. The hobby has been a passion of mine for 44 years and I look forward to enjoying our hobby for another 44 years.

73,

Michael, AA6DY

Chairman, RF Concepts/Alpha Amplifiers

Product and Tuner updates from Ken, NØQO

Product Upgrades

We are progressing nicely with getting folks upgraded to the new version of 9500 amplifier firmware. The upgrades are going well, and we have the latest firmware, 3.03c posted on our website. You can now go ahead and install the firmware yourself and contact us if you run into any issues.

The 9500 remote software is under development and progressing nicely. The team has made some terrific improvements in responsiveness and operation. We are still fixing some of the unintended "breakage" associated with software changes, and once those are fixed we will be ready for Beta test. We have a list of volunteers identified to assist with the Beta program once we are ready to enter that phase. I would like to thank these folks for volunteering. It is terrific having the community assist with ruggedizing products!

4040 DreamTuner Status

I've been asked to put together a complete review of where we are, including pictures that we can post on the website. But for now, this is a 'newsletter' size recap.

We are debugging hardware problem on the tuner that affects the accuracy of impedance measurements at SWR measurements greater than about 10:1. As a result, we have had to re-think the measurement technique and have come up with solution, which requires us to spin some hardware to solve the problem correctly. This will unfortunately delay us a couple of months while we get the new hardware, test it, and get it back into verification. Other than that, the tuner is progressing with evaluation and fine tuning.

We have had a couple folks send us notes asking if they thought they would see their tuners before they die, hi, hi. I certainly hope so! As badly as the community wants the tuner, I want even more, to start shipping it. We get inquiries frequently about when it will be ready to install. We continue to tell everyone that just as soon as it passes Alpha standards in testing here and in Beta, we will begin shipping. The manufacturing line is ready to ship just as soon as we release it. Most sub assemblies are complete and ready for final assembly and test.

We recently gave our website a bit of a face lift. In the process, we inadvertently lost the links for the tuner. WOW! we certainly got a lot of calls about that! Sorry for the confusion. Rest assured the tuner is alive and well.

New Wattmeter Acceptance

We have received many orders for the 4510A and 4520A wattmeters. The community appears to be embracing the new design and capability. Gordon has touted the performance of the new architecture in the last newsletter. Undoubtedly it is one of the most accurate devices on the planet for measuring RF power over a very wide dynamic range. Our extensive calibration strategy provides an absolutely stellar instrument for lab as well as field use - both amateur and commercial!

We are shipping these units as fast as we build them - get your order in now for the Holidays.

New Tube Program

RF Concepts is very pleased with the response to the new Alpha Tube program! We have received a great many orders for new tubes. The most popular so far have been the 3-500ZG, in singles and matched sets, along with the 811A, also in singles and matched sets. We are pleased to provide vacuum tubes at a very competitive price. Should you be in need of new tubes for your older amplifiers, give us a call. I think you will be very pleased with the outcome! I might add that this initiative is intended to continue our commitment to provide the amateur community options for enjoying their hobby by not having to worry about availability of tubes in the foreseeable future. Pass on the good news to your friends and look for the tubes here on our website.

Used Equipment Webpage

We have recently made the move to bring all sales back in-house. as a result, our used equipment and demo amplifiers are now listed on our website, under the "demo amp page." Should you be interested in a lightly used amplifier, a demo amplifier (a few come up from time to time), or an older legacy amp, take a look and give us a call! The website is located here .

73,

Ken, NØQO

We're backlogged, but the factory is working to clear it.

Summer was nice to Alpha. Lots of hams took the time to hang some aluminum and clean up the shack. It doesn't matter if you're a contester or a ragchewer - adding an amplifier to that HF station makes a huge difference. Check out this link to a series of youtube videos by Al, KØCN, here you can hear him bust a pileup like he was the only station on the air. Power is good. Alpha power is the best.

For those that are interested, we still have available our 50/25/25 program to help purchase amplifiers - 50% up front, 25% 30 days later, and the final payment 30 days hence.

73,

Mike

Letter from Gordon Hardman, WØRUN

Small Gordon Small

I'm not dead yet...

In the Monty Python movie "The Quest for the Holy Grail", there is a character who wanders around in the midst of the black death proclaiming "I'm not dead yet". In early October at the 6m BBQ in Austin, I found out that the same is true of 6 meters.

The 6m barbeque is held every year, by invitation, in Austin. It is a great time for serious 6m operators to get together and find out what is going on in terms of propagation, the solar cycle, equipment, dxpeditions and so on. In some previous years we have gone to show off Alpha 6m amplifiers and so on. This year, since it was being held at the QTH of K5AND who already has an Alpha 8406, taking another one seemed unnecessary. So Molly and I just took along one of the new AP4510A wattmeters that goes form 1.7 to 55 MHz.

Here is a picture of the "amplifier wall" in Dick's shack showing the nice array of Alpha products including an 8406 on the right and the new AP4510A on the desk.

For me, one of the highlights of the weekend is the presentation by Jim Kennedy, KH6/K6MIO. Jim is an expert on all things to do with 6m propagation. This includes both sporadic E and the solar cycle, both of which he talked about this weekend.

Jim has talked about some "extreme" modes of E-skip related propagation before. This weekend he talked about a really dramatic series of openings that occurred from June 27-29 last year, 2012. The plot below shows a lot of QSO's. But the really amazing thing is that he weeded out all QSO's that were shorter than 8,800km!

So in reality, there were thousands of QSOs

not shown in the same period over paths that still would be considered "dx". The ones shown are going a third of the way round the entire planet! Also, the opening repeated on several days, so there was enough time for the word to spread and for folks to get on.

The reasons for this EEWE (Extreme East West Es) are becoming better understood, but you would have to attend one of Jim's talks to get a good understanding of the phenomenon. But suffice it to say that it has nothing to do with the sunspot cycle, other than calm magnetic field conditions are needed. But apparently it can occur as well at all times of the solar cycle.

Speaking of the solar cycle, Jim gave a nice summary of where we are and where we might be headed in cycle 24. The graph below shows the total sunspot count as well as the separate counts for the southern and northern hemispheres of the sun.

It is clear that the northern hemisphere contributed most spots to the peak that we observed in early 2012. The dots on the ends show some possible (but reasonable) extrapolations. So the possibility of a "double header" is not entirely out of the question. Looking at it, if we are going to get a second peak, and have the chance of the MUF going about 50 MHz, we should see it in the next 6 months or so. This world-wide F-layer propagation would be a lot of fun.

For both weak F2 propagation, as well as the extreme Es, having a good station is important. The rule of thumb is bigger and higher antennas, and lots of transmitter power! So this is an excellent time to upgrade your station, as you might be able to hook into some world-wide F2 fun, and then have a great time with extreme E after the sunspot peak is over.

So take a look at our web site- the Alpha 8406 is the finest legal limit amplifier available. It will even work well for moonbounce... Also, the new 4510A wattmeter will allow you to make sure your antenna is well matched and that the whole station is putting out the power it should be. Mark Twain's words could be applied to the solar cycle and 6m in general "Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated". See you on the magic band!

73,

Gordon, WØRUN