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goaliebob99

Supporting Founder

Last reply Sep 28, 2008 · posted in The Chit Chat Club

Need ham radio help

Calling all hams out there....

I need some help.

I have a yaesu 901dm and I keep blowing fuses. I have the radio all hooked up to my diapole antenna. I turn on the heater tubes and 30 seconds later there glowing red... 30 seconds after that, the tubes get white electrical shocks inside the tube and then the power's 5 amp fuse blows turning everything off. Is there something that im not doing right or is there something wrong with this rig?

Thanks.

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jayn_j

Sep 25, 2008

goaliebob99 said:
Calling all hams out there....

I need some help.

I have a yaesu 901dm and I keep blowing fuses. I have the radio all hooked up to my diapole antenna. I turn on the heater tubes and 30 seconds later there glowing red... 30 seconds after that, the tubes get white electrical shocks inside the tube and then the power's 5 amp fuse blows turning everything off. Is there something that im not doing right or is there something wrong with this rig?

Thanks.

The fuse is blowing because you are getting plate to grid arcing. Not good for the tubes. This shouldn't be happening, especially if you are not attempting to transmit. Are you sure the transmitter is off? I've seen this sort of thing with a shorted antenna when transmitting.

When you say red, do you mean a dull orange? Red would set off some alarms. Is the power switches set to 115 volts?

I would say the set is defective. Possibly a bad capacitor, or coils shorted within the primary of the HV transformer. Others?

goaliebob99

Sep 25, 2008

Yep I mean dull orange

goaliebob99

Sep 25, 2008

jayn_j said:
The fuse is blowing because you are getting plate to grid arcing. Not good for the tubes. This shouldn't be happening, especially if you are not attempting to transmit. Are you sure the transmitter is off? I've seen this sort of thing with a shorted antenna when transmitting.

When you say red, do you mean a dull orange? Red would set off some alarms. Is the power switches set to 115 volts?

I would say the set is defective. Possibly a bad capacitor, or coils shorted within the primary of the HV transformer. Others?

Transmitter is on.. When its off I can recive fine...

jayn_j

Sep 25, 2008

goaliebob99 said:
Transmitter is on.. When its off I can recive fine...

Ah, you didn't say that.

Transmitting puts out a lot of energy. If you have a bad SWR, all that energy gets reflected back into the transmitter and bad things happen. I have seen plates melt in vacuum tubes, arcing like you are getting, and even connector fusing.

disconnect the antenna from the transmitter. If you can get ahold of a 50 ohm load, do so. A dummy load is always nice to have around. Try connecting the dummy load and see if it will load ok.

Second step. Take an ohmmeter and check across the center connector to ground. It should show an open. If shorted, you have found your problem. Check both the antenna and the coax. I have found more problems with bad coax joints.

If the open test is OK, repeat, but short across the coax at the antenna end. Does it show shorted? If not, you have a cold solder joint somewhere in the co-ax.

If this all checks out OK, look at the section of the manual that talks about peaking the final amplifier stage. There is generally one, or a pair of adjustments you make by alternatingly dipping and peaking the final tank circuit. Failing to do this will cause exactly what you are seeing.

Finally, double check the antenna length. Use an SWR bridge if possible.

Try all of that and get back to us.

truckracer

Sep 28, 2008

I was thinking (common problems) is a shorted coax.

"MysteryMan"

Pub Member / Supporter Cutting Edge

Last reply 3 minutes ago · posted in Computers and Gadgets

Windows 10/11 Download

I created this thread on the original Edgecutter Cutting Edge Forums site. It's simply a place for those to review the latest software available for those using Windows 10 and Windows 11. To date it has received 112,559 views. I have been asked by staff to continue this thread here.

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EarDemon

Oct 13, 2026

If it wasn't for what I want, I wouldn't need any of this.

Do I need a collection of handheld radios, scanners and speed enforcement countermeasures? Nope, but I want them. Very little, if any of the software used to interface with these devices is available on Linux.

WhiteBeard

Oct 13, 2026

EarDemon said:
If it wasn't for what I want, I wouldn't need any of this.

Do I need a collection of handheld radios, scanners and speed enforcement countermeasures? Nope, but I want them. Very little, if any of the software used to interface with these devices is available on Linux.

To each there own but I've found that Windows can't do much more than Linux can. Can't have everything.

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EarDemon

Oct 14, 2026

WhiteBeard said:
To each there own but I've found that Windows can't do much more than Linux can. Can't have everything.

For niche use cases, yes I agree. Kali for ethical hacking and security testing, and running a Cacti server for network monitoring are the two things I have experience in. Plus thousands and thousands of other things, but for every day use I just can't see it. The owner of the GMRS repeater that I pay to access is changing the Tx DPL tones tomorrow, while Chirp is available on Linux, the software to program my MXT500 is not.

I run Fedora and Ubuntu in VMWare, honestly I don't care much for the UI of either of them and I don't feel like spending days/weeks to customize the UI to make it look Windows-like when I could just use Windows. The cartoonish dock at the bottom of the screen reminds me of Apple products.

harshness

Oct 15, 2026

EarDemon said:
I don't care much for the UI of either of them and I don't feel like spending days/weeks to customize the UI to make it look Windows-like when I could just use Windows.

What is so fantabulous about the Windows UI? By many accounts, it has been going downhill since Windows 7.

There are Linux desktops that offer Windows or Mac UIs, yet you don't hear much chatter about them outside of questions about when the creators might get sued.

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EarDemon

Oct 15, 2026

harshness said:
What is so fantabulous about the Windows UI?

Because it's what I prefer. I know I've said this a few times, I use Open Shell to give me the cascading start menu a la WIN 95 and NT4.0. The only reason I went from Windows Vista to 7 back in the day was because of Classic Shell. I cannot stand anything other than the OG start menu from 30+ years ago. I'm using ExplorerPatcher to give me Windows 10 UI elements of the taskbar and right click context menus.

If you could take a look at how I set up Windows 95, you'd find many similarities to how I use 11.

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EarDemon

Oct 15, 2026

I could probably use that as a starting point, but I don't like the full size icons. If you have to click on each folder that's also a no-go for me, it has to be cascading.

I used to have Peppermint Linux in a VM, that was about as close as I could get to recreating a Windows NT4.0 style of menu structure, but I could never get it to scale properly in VMWare on a 4K display and eventually gave up.

Whatever the boot up time it's fine with me. The longest part of my bootup is the HP SureStart BIOS integrity check. Once that is done, it's only a few more seconds. I haven't done this reg tweak yet since the reformat, but I switched the bootup animation to the Windows 10 style spinning circle of dots, and it's two and a half rotations. I can live with that.

harshness

Oct 16, 2026

EarDemon said:
Because it's what I prefer.

I hope you don't believe that makes it wonderful (especially when you're using workarounds for Microsoft's malfeasance).

I use LibreOffice as opposed to Microsoft office (even in Windows) because it's UI is like the Office of old, so I'm putting my money where my mouth is (in a manner of speaking). The ribbon was one of the worst ideas to come out Redmond.

HipKat

Oct 16, 2026

EarDemon said:
I could probably use that as a starting point, but I don't like the full size icons. If you have to click on each folder that's also a no-go for me, it has to be cascading.

I used to have Peppermint Linux in a VM, that was about as close as I could get to recreating a Windows NT4.0 style of menu structure, but I could never get it to scale properly in VMWare on a 4K display and eventually gave up.

Whatever the boot up time it's fine with me. The longest part of my bootup is the HP SureStart BIOS integrity check. Once that is done, it's only a few more seconds. I haven't done this reg tweak yet since the reformat, but I switched the bootup animation to the Windows 10 style spinning circle of dots, and it's two and a half rotations. I can live with that.

I used to pin the C: drive to the Win Taskbar and it would open in cascading style

"MysteryMan"

3 minutes ago

2026-10 Preview Update Builds: 26300.9818 and 26200.9818 (KB5127936) has been released. Moderate time needed for those choosing to perform a manual download/install/restart. Quality improvements only. No new operating system features.

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Scott Greczkowski

Staff member HERE TO HELP YOU! Cutting Edge

Last reply 30 minutes ago · posted in The Chit Chat Club

Song Name Game Part 3!

Sometimes a thread gets so many posts in it that is can cause issues for the server so that why today we introduce The Song Name Game Part 3!

So let the game continue!

The last song was added by Bobby who posted...

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CONTINUE ON AND HAVE FUN! WELCOME HOME TO SATELLITEGUYS.US!

Here are the original rules for the game as posted by WebbyDude back in 2006. http://www.satelliteguys.us/threads/68645-Song-Name-Game

Just name a song title and the band who performed it. The next person does the same thing, but needs to list a song title or band name which includes a word from the previous entry. Pick songs from any genre.

Example:

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Another example:

Ride the Lightning -- Metallica

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Get it?

An additional note: we all know that song titles, sometimes, use profane words. Because this is a family friendly website it is advised that you clean up that title up a bit. This is accomplished by using something like sh!t instead of the real word. Thanks....

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Oct 17, 2026

Dos cackleberrys over easy on top of 2 corned beef hash patties fried in skillet... Chocolate milk.

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