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Need AC Controller board for Harris SX-5A transmitter

A

artsutton

A good friend of mine has a 5KW Harris SX transmitter. The AC Controller board went out and he's trying to find a replacement. Harris no longer supports SX series. The part number is 9923655002. If anyone has any ideas on a substitute part which will work or a source for replacement parts, please post.
Thanks.
 
Good luck finding one, Art. I had one go out on my last Summer. And the time, Harris had a couple left and offered to send me one for $900! We put in an order for a Nautel J1000 instead. The client said "If I'm spending that damn much, I'm not spending it on a 18 year old piece of equipment"! Harris has really cut their nose off despite their face on this one.
 
Bengalsfan said:
Good luck finding one, Art. I had one go out on my last Summer. And the time, Harris had a couple left and offered to send me one for $900! We put in an order for a Nautel J1000 instead. The client said "If I'm spending that damn much, I'm not spending it on a 18 year old piece of equipment"! Harris has really cut their nose off despite their face on this one.
Click to expand...
I agree. There are still a lot of SX units in service. We found them to be good units except for the LED display.

I've still got one in service (2.5KW) and a 1KW unit in storage. I think I will hold on to it for parts.
 
artsutton said:
The AC Controller board went out and he's trying to find a replacement.
Click to expand...
I'm not familiar with that particular board, but why can it not be repaired? Why does it have to be replaced?
 
That would be the really neat deal. Try, at your convinence, to fix the board. Then you'll have a backup to the Nautel. You're the hero because now the station is never off for long. :)
 
pellmell said:
artsutton said:
The AC Controller board went out and he's trying to find a replacement.
Click to expand...
I'm not familiar with that particular board, but why can it not be repaired? Why does it have to be replaced?
Click to expand...

I had one of these in a CD20k that went out constantly. For the first two years it was replaced with a new one, after that I tried shotgunning the board and could never get it to work. Maybe I have lousy soldering technique, but it ain't supposed to be this hard.
 
The problem with the SX series controller boards is there are ICs on there that are no longer available or very expensive on the obsolete parts market. Not really Harris' fault - that's just progress. I have two SX's still running full time and I wish I had the foresight to buy a pile of ICs for that board while the were cheap and plentiful. The owners have been told they are on borrowed time.
 
Do you recall off the top of your head which ICs are in short supply? There is a very vibrant salvage market out there for discontinued ICs, and not all of them are exorbitantly expensive. I know I have some Signetics NE540s in my inventory that I will never use. They were scarce and expensive for quite a while.
 
I don't recall the numbers, but I think there are some A/D's in the metering circuit made by Analog Devices that are hard to get. The IC's that usually blow on that board have been from surges coming in through the remote metering and control lines in my experience with it. Harris did good when they eliminated the status/multimeter board in the Gates series - that box is easy to work on (which has been rare for me - I have three of those running). Then they went backwards with the DAX series - no easy field repair on that puppy. Even the MOSFETs are soldered in.
 
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