John, I have wondered the same thing. I have a 500 watt Bird attenuator that
we used regularly to tune up a 1300 watt amplifier with no problem at all. I
tested it up to 2 minutes at 1300 watts carrier and never hurt anything, the
cooling fins just started to warm up a bit.
I also have 1 KW Bird attenuator and saw what appeared to be the same exact
load with a fan added and it was rated at 2500 watts.
I suspect using the 500 Bird watt load with a small fan would handle 1500
watts for longer than most hams would ever want to run their amp into it.
That said, I have seen 500 watt bird loads so warm you could barely hang
onto them with just under 500 watts at 950 MHz running into them for hours
on end, so they will warm up if you push them long enough.
NG9R
Date: Fri, 4 Dec 2015 13:41:35 -0500
From: "john@kk9a.com" <john@kk9a.com>
To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: [TowerTalk] Dummy Load Rating
Message-ID: <bf04437703c89f4b66acf6fdd2789144.squirrel@www11.qth.com>
Content-Type: text/plain;charset=iso-8859-1
I have a couple of Bird dummy loads, one is rated at 500 watts and one is
1000 watts, continuous duty. I have never seen an intermittent duty rating.
Does anyone have an idea how much power these can safely handle for a short
duration?
John KK9A
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