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President Lincoln (old style) question.

twa77

Well-Known Member
May 2, 2008
104
111
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South Dakota
I have a president Lincoln that rogerbird went through a few years back. I noticed on my rs20m amp meter that when I have rf power all the way up it dead keys around 5 amps then when I modulate the current goes down. Seems like current should rise on modulation. Just wondering if this seems normal. I have a Aries 460 that I’ll put on tomorrow to get a ballpark idea of dead key vs modulated power. I did notice if I roll the rf power down it dead keys less then goes up with modulation. Just seems a bit odd.
 

Well the dead key was turned up really high.put it so at full power its at 10 adjustable down to 1 at the low end. Goes up to 28 with a whistle. This is on aries 460 digital watt meter into a dummy load.
 
Rogerbird is known for doing good work on these radios so take this with a grain of salt, but about 12-13 years ago he set up a HR2510 for me and it also had a really high deadkey when I got it back from him and I had to go in and adjust it down.

Just posting up as I had a similar experience. Not knocking Rogerbird as he did a great job on other areas of the radio. It was just the extremely high deadkey that surprised me.
 
Just fyi. I am not down talking Rogerbird either. I just wasnt aware of that fact until i did a little experimenting. I would rather have it by the factory specs then hot rodded. The radio works great and i would recommend Rogerbird to anyone.
 
Service manual calls for 20W for CW but 10 for AM. Perhaps there's a reason he set AM at 20W, I don't know. He's on this forum from time to time so maybe he can explain further.
 
My lincoln doesnt have a vr 107 to adjust am. Its blank but its printed on the board. I can just use the rf power knob on front of radio
 
The Lincoln has a Variable power on the face and on the board one of the vr's has been removed, a diode is placed across it to jumper it.
It is silkscreened on the board as a VR being there.

73
Jeff
 
I have several Lincolns and none do 21 W dead key on AM. That is crazy high. But I believe the CW power will turn down the AM dead key. No one usually uses CW on this kind of radio anyway.
 
I dont use am all that often either. Th only time is when my friend is running trucks around town. I’ll pop in and say hello. Thats when he said it sounds scratchy and this whole thing began. I’ll probably just back it off a vr103 a ways and use rf power on the face for the rest. I noticed vr103 is super touchy when trying to lower it.
 
I dont use am all that often either. Th only time is when my friend is running trucks around town. I’ll pop in and say hello. Thats when he said it sounds scratchy and this whole thing began. I’ll probably just back it off a vr103 a ways and use rf power on the face for the rest. I noticed vr103 is super touchy when trying to lower it.

I do not recall what settings I was using back then, but the Lincoln Service Manual does state to set the CW dead key to 21w and AM dead key to 10w. (it also calls for VR107 which is removed to allow the Front Panel RF Power control)
Typically back then, power adjustments were set to slightly lower than max dead key output.
In your case I would lower the VR103 adjustment to a max 10w dead key for AM.
Also, Make sure you are using the correct power cord (wire gauge) for the Lincoln, to make sure you are not starving the transmitter current level on transmit.

If I can be of any help, let me know. (Rogerbird1@aim.com)
Roger
 

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