[450] If you don't know the words, just hum along.

[David McKenzie]

huzzah!

On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 12:30 PM, William Knapp / KC1WJ <kc1wj at kc1wj.com> wrote:
> If any of you have been listening on 450 lately, there have been several
> conversations about the Astron VS 50M power supply that I got from Dave
> around two years ago. The thing worked great. It put out tons of current and
> I was very happy with it.
> One day it started humming. The more load you put on it, the louder the hum.
> Heck, if I drew 20 amps from the thing it sounded like the case was gonna
> rattle right off. I tightened up all the screws, nuts, bolts etc., to no
> avail. I had another supply, a 20 amp switcher that would run most of my
> gear, so I put the Astron to the side and figured I would get around to
> fixing it when I had the initiative and / or need.
> Dave (FSY) sent me a link to a message board where people were discussing
> similar problems they were having with the Astron supply. There are 2 big
> honkin' diodes mounted on the back of the supply and often times, one opens
> up, putting a lot of strain on the enetire supply to produce DC.
> Today I called up Astron, asked for customer service and talked to a fellow
> named Steve. He didn't sound like a customer service guy at all, for all I
> know he could have been the owner. He told me that a few years ago they got
> a bad batch of 1N1184 diodes and in the past year or so they have been
> coming back to haunt him.
> He asked me for my name and address and said he's send me out a pair of new
> ones, free of charge. He recommended that I replace the pair because there
> was a good chance that the other one might pop at any time since it was from
> the same bad batch of diodes.
> Now THAT'S what I call customer service!!!!!!!!!!
> Thanks to Dave K1FSY for the info and the link.
>
> 73!
>
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