What about the 5B4AGN filters, these are gooooood!!!! -----Original Message----- From: Jim Brown Sent: Thursday, April 28, 2011 4:28 PM To: elecraft@mailman.qth.net Subject: Re: [Elecraft] OT: ICE still functioning?
On 4/28/2011 7:44 AM, dave wrote: > It appears that I.C.E. may indeed be kaput. There are three designs of bandpass filters for the ham bands. ICE, Dunestar, and W3NQN filters (the NQN filters are sold by Array Solutions). All are designed for use between the transceiver and either a power amp or matched antenna. Last week, there was a thread on the NCCC reflector about bandpass filters.There was general agreement that while ICE filters "work," they are rather prone to fail at their rated 100W power levels, and everyone who said they owned them reported failures. I've had two such failures in the two years that I've owned two of them. Quality control is also poor -- of four single-band filters and two 419's that I bought, all arrived out of alignment. They were repaired at no cost, but I had to pay shipping to Indianapolis, and was without them while they were being repaired. My assessment is that they will fail if run at 100 watts, but they are less likely to fail at the 30-50W levels required to drive a power amp. A west coast company, Dunestar, has been making bandpass filters for at least a decade, and several NCCC members have owned and used them for a while. All reports on Dunestar filters have been positive, and there were no reports of failures. http://www.dunestar.com/filters.htm Array Solutions sells bandpass filters designed by W3NQN, and described in a QST article quite a few years ago. It isn't clear who builds them, but I'd guess it's Array Solutions. They also sell switching systems for these filters. In terms of filtering performance, the W3NQN filters are quite superior, followed by Dunestar and then ICE. My two ICE 419s will be for sale as soon as I can replace them. 73, Jim K9YC ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
