 RoeTest (Röhrentest) |
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| RoeTest von Mikhail Volkov (Original text from Mr. Volkov) A tube / valve tester is really necessary to my mind if you deal with the valves. This is very important since the valves are not produced any more (with some exceptions) and you get the valves from different sources and have to test them before you start at all. Secondly the choice of certain valve plus regular control of the functioning valves and there exchange require definitely a comfortable way to test them. Due to intensive and long travel in my job the valves are my occasional but still favorite hobby. Unfortunately the testers I had or still have come really in contradiction with this since you have very much time to start to work with. I had a Russian L3 which is nice. But you have to wait several minutes until the valves inside are in a working condition and it is very intensive in making all controls in the right position, changing the cards and so on. So I sold it. I still have RPM370 and probably keep it as a piece of German valve engineering but it has the same problem with too much time to make the measurements especially if you got a lot of used valves of different types. So I gave up the regular measurements for a time and had accumulated a big batch of untested valves. That is why I was glad to come across a reference about a valve tester of Mr. Weigl in the internet. After studying the specs I was really excited to get the tester. It should meet the major part of my requirements and even one more which I was trying to find for a long time namely a data base of the valves. I got that time the Version 7. The parts arrived very fast. The assembly was described by other owners. So mainly I had the same small issues like too small opening for the 230V connector with HF-Filter, shaking hands by soldering the USB interface and so on. But everything was perfect at the end. The launch of the tester was done also without any serious issues thanks to detailed description. I have chosen a hard case for the housing and ordered the front plate in according dimensions. Since I am tight with my hobby room I can place the case in each place and do my tests very fast. I use a small notebook which I can store in the same case. To tell the truth I did once a batch of small tubes in front of TV watching a football game in parallel (Valve God forgive me!) Since launch of the tester I have measured with the tester around 800 valves and I am really satisfied with the way the tester works. I am happy to have finally the overview of my valves stored with measurement specs! One topic which disturbs me is the temperature of the transistors in my version if you measure output valves or valves with strong heating. I saw that in the next versions the problem was recognized and Mr. Wiegl suggested to use a separate and real cooler instead of the front plate. But I plan to install an additional cooler just on top of the front plate to have this problem at least partially solved. In the meanwhile I did a tune up to have more G1 voltage. Also a nice option provided by Mr. Weigl. I would like to thank Mr. Weigl for such a nice engineered tester which can be reproduced in a very easy way. It refers not only to the hardware but also to the software. Special thanks for support and readiness to give a good advice.    |
