To each his own. I have four of the ICE 419 units (two spares) and have
used them on many DXpeditions. Yes, they can be troublesome to operate and
fix, but my experience is failure is most often caused by poor operation,
forgetting to switch band on the 410 while changing the radio band. They
also do not work well with poor antennas (high SWR). This has been
mitigated somewhat by using the Bandmaster from Array Solutions to
automatically switch the 419. BTW, I use these with two 200 watt radios
(Kenwood TS-480HX), and have operated at full power RTTY.
73, Keith NM5G
-----Original Message-----
From: TowerTalk <towertalk-bounces@contesting.com> On Behalf Of Dave
Hachadorian
Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2020 10:14 PM
To: reflector Towertalk <towertalk@contesting.com>
Subject: Re: [TowerTalk] ICE 419B schematic, component values and
replacement part numbers
There's a ton of history in the Towertalk Reflector Archives about these ICE
419 units. The David Montgomery mentioned in W5WZ's document is my neighbor
W7WW. He and I shared the info received from ICE with the Towertalk
community long ago. I think it was K1TTT who chimed in at that time, and
recommended the CDV16 series capacitors instead of the CDV19's because the
CDV16's are actually RF-rated.
Even after I replaced W7WW's 10 and 15 meter caps with FOUR CDV16's in
parallel, they still ran very hot, although they never did fail, even at 100
watts of RTTY in the NAQP contests. The issue for the caps is RF current,
not voltage.
The ICE 419 was a miserable little unit, plagued not only with capacitor
failures, but dropouts on receive because the signal path goes through 10
sets of relaxed relay contacts. Band to band isolation is also way below
other commercial devices.
Dave Hachadorian, K6LL
Yuma, AZ
-----Original Message-----
From: w5wz@w5wz.com
Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2020 6:35 PM
To: towertalk@contesting.com
Subject: [TowerTalk] ICE 419B schematic, component values and replacement
part numbers
The 15 meter section of one of my ICE 419B units failed during 2020 January
NAQP SSB. I began searching for a schematic, or a list of part numbers, or
a list of part values. My search was mostly in vain. I did however find a
thread here on TowerTalk from July 2011 with good discussion about the unit
and probable causes of failure. Tony N2TK "sniff and look" troubleshooting
technique quickly led to the single burned and discolored capacitor. Mark
K5ER provided me a copy of an ICE document listing design values.
With all that in hand, I created a reference sheet with the component values
and replacement part numbers to assist me. Mouser did not have correct
capacitor values for the resonating section of 40 and 80 meters, so I left
that blank.
I'm sharing the reference sheet here as a resource to the group.
http://w5wz.com/files/ICE_bandpass/ICE_419_parts.pdf
I hope this can help someone else.
--Scott, W5WZ
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