I have an amp thats called a Firebird f100 Swinger 4-Bil. This was my Fathers before he passed, and i know nothing about it. I haven,t found out much about the amp searching on-line either. I know there are qite a few very knowledgeable people here, so i though i,d ask if anyone has any info on the thing. I,ve had it a long time, and would guess it has to be from the late 70,s. This is my first post. Bear with me!
-
You can now help support WorldwideDX when you shop on Amazon at no additional cost to you! Simply follow this Shop on Amazon link first and a portion of any purchase is sent to WorldwideDX to help with site costs.
Firebird
- Thread starter Challenger
- Start date
thanks moleculo,
I took some pics, but not sure how to post them. This ol amp has two 6lq6 tubes. When i key up, it hits about 70 watts driven with my golden eagle m3. It swings to about 185 w . This is with about 3 w key. The brownings are the only thing i have to test it with, although i hooked it to my wifes cobra mobile, at 4 w there wasn,t alot of difference. The amp did dead key more into a dummy load 95 w. Swung at 200 aqpproximately. This is on 11 meter. Like i said, i have some pics now, just not sure how to post them. The amp has a rec. boost which is nice, rf swinger, 10-40 m, bil amp (rec amp) that works excellent, stndy-oper switch, am/fm-ssb/cw. I just cant find any info on it.
I took some pics, but not sure how to post them. This ol amp has two 6lq6 tubes. When i key up, it hits about 70 watts driven with my golden eagle m3. It swings to about 185 w . This is with about 3 w key. The brownings are the only thing i have to test it with, although i hooked it to my wifes cobra mobile, at 4 w there wasn,t alot of difference. The amp did dead key more into a dummy load 95 w. Swung at 200 aqpproximately. This is on 11 meter. Like i said, i have some pics now, just not sure how to post them. The amp has a rec. boost which is nice, rf swinger, 10-40 m, bil amp (rec amp) that works excellent, stndy-oper switch, am/fm-ssb/cw. I just cant find any info on it.
You have a tube type amp that is running; what specific questions do you need an answer to?
.
Most specifically i,d like to have an owners manual or a schematic on the amp. As i said earlier it was my fathers. Not really looking to sell the thing; only to learn more about it. Knowledge is power.
Your amplifier is one of many "Knock-off" amps circa 1970; although the name may be different, they all had the same design. The amplifier has about 800 volts on the tubes and is operated Class A (no bias, all grids grounded), what you see is what you get, don't go trying to squeeze 10 more watts out of the thing, it's a 150 watts box at it's best; tune it for swing on your meter.
This is a schematic for your type of amplifier, this roadmap will get you any where you want to go inside that amp.
Good luck
es
73
Thanks Slam Dunk,
Closest i,ve found yet. And yes i realize it is one of the many variations of amps made in the era, or as you put it, knock offs. I must ask you though, a knock off of what? I,ve never had an amp that is more reliable than this one.
Closest i,ve found yet. And yes i realize it is one of the many variations of amps made in the era, or as you put it, knock offs. I must ask you though, a knock off of what? I,ve never had an amp that is more reliable than this one.
ABC, Apollo, Kris, Firebird and, Courier were makers of single band amps in the early '70 using the 6LQ6 - 6JE6 tubes; some were multi-band "Amateur" amplifiers. D & A (Delaney and Allen), Maco and, Varmit made bigger amps using the 6LF6 family of tubes. Maco was a large supplier of amps using the 8950/2057 tube in mobile designs. As the 6 volt tubes dried up, Kenrich went to the 20LF6.
There were monster CB amps in the 1980 made by Telstar and Anderson with Ceramic tubes.
You had to have a license to buy Amateur Amps at the local outlet so, there were very few new amps on the CB Band around here.
.
Last edited:
Thanks NorthStar. It is kinda pretty, ha ha. Funny though, i saved the pics i took the other day in my ebay folder. Didn,t realize that until i looked at them on this forum. I,m not putting it on ebay. Putting it back on the shelf. Thanks to all of you who have helped me with this. Especially for the schematic.
Not the Firebird F100, but the Firebird 500 (4 tube version) is available on CB Tricks
http://www.cbtricks.com/Amp/firebird/index.htm
...runna pile-up on 6m SSB