Anan 7000 and mercury hookup

JeffH
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Anan 7000 and mercury hookup

Postby JeffH » Fri Feb 24, 2023 7:08 pm

Does anyone know the electrical hookup, and Thetis settings for automatic control of a Mercury IIIs amp and Mercury antenna tuner, to an Anan 7000DLE Mk III?
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w-u-2-o
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Re: Anan 7000 and mercury hookup

Postby w-u-2-o » Fri Feb 24, 2023 7:43 pm

The Mercury IIIS has no provisions for "automatic control", other than its own internal frequency counter. Apache/Thetis does not support ALC. Therefore the only connections possible are PTT and RF, and no special setup of Thetis is required.

And don't forget proper grounding, of course!

Is this your first amplifier?
JeffH
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Re: Anan 7000 and mercury hookup

Postby JeffH » Fri Feb 24, 2023 8:53 pm

Yes! This is my first amp, coming soon. I already have the Mercury tuner. I thought I could key the tuner with an OC pin to ground, to put the tuner into tune mode from the TUN button on the 7000, but maybe not.
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w-u-2-o
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Re: Anan 7000 and mercury hookup

Postby w-u-2-o » Fri Feb 24, 2023 9:48 pm

You might be able to get the tuner started that way, but you will have to manually turn off TUN when it is done. I'd concentrate on the Icom style connections and study up on how the AH-4 tuner interface works.

If you really want to get crazy, you could use an Arduino or something like that to interface between Thetis and the Mercury tuner that would emulate an AH-4 and even send serial CAT commands to Thetis to fully close the command loop. I did something similar using a PLC, Node Red, and my KPA1500 amp.

As for this being your first amp, consider your workflow with the amp:

1. Tune up. It seems you've already got a handle on that.

2. Use two-tone (drive power mode) to set your drive level out of the 7000 to get the power level you want out of the amp.

Once that is set you do not need to worry about a lack of ALC. The software ALC in the radio will prevent you from ever exceeding the drive level you set in step 2 above.

Don't be the guy that thinks "I paid for 1200W, by golly, and I want to see that meter pinned at 1200W all the time!" Because that's the guy that is splattering the band with horrible IMD. If you use PureSignal it will fight you tooth and nail and generally prevent you from overdriving the amp like this. Read this topic to learn more: https://community.apache-labs.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=2862

Speaking of PureSignal, did you buy an external coupler so you can use PureSignal with the Mercury IIIS?
JeffH
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Re: Anan 7000 and mercury hookup

Postby JeffH » Sat Feb 25, 2023 12:48 am

I have the Clean RF.com sampler, but I have heard that one is not recommended. Do you have a recommendation on a coupler? I have heard that the correct amount of feedback is required.
K1LSB
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Re: Anan 7000 and mercury hookup

Postby K1LSB » Sat Feb 25, 2023 4:03 am

The main thing is to protect the front end of the receiver from too much feedback power. I built a pure resistive coupler using some vintage 2-watt Allen Bradley carbon composition resistors, the total resistance is 18K ohms, that works fine for any level of power from 25 watts to well over 1.5 kilowatts. Within those limits PureSignal will automatically adjust the attenuation to work with whatever amount of feedback power is delivered.

I built one of those for someone else too, I don't remember who.

Mark
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w-u-2-o
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Re: Anan 7000 and mercury hookup

Postby w-u-2-o » Sat Feb 25, 2023 12:52 pm

JeffH wrote:I have the Clean RF.com sampler, but I have heard that one is not recommended. Do you have a recommendation on a coupler? I have heard that the correct amount of feedback is required.

The problem with the Clean RF sampler is that it is a variable device and the adjustment is so sensitive that it can easily be moved to a setting that could allow damage to the 7000.

Do not exceed +13dBm on any input to the 7000 or damage may occur.

The gold standard is the Xtronic XDC-4 high power HF coupler. HRO carries it but it is almost always out of stock.

You can use almost any combination of coupler and attenuator necessary for a total of 50dB of attenuation in the feedback path (1000W is 60dBm, 60-50 = 10dBm).

More detailed calculations can be found here: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=2384

With the Xtronic products becoming unobtanium, building one seems like it's becoming a better and better idea. You can find professional high power HF couplers from companies like Narda and Werlatone, but they cost a mint. Rarely you can find something appropriate on eBay.

If you need to add attenuators at least those are inexpensive. You can buy those new from Mini Circuits, and there are plenty on eBay.
SM3PZG
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Re: Anan 7000 and mercury hookup

Postby SM3PZG » Sat Feb 25, 2023 3:46 pm

I use the VK3AMP -55dB coupler with a Expert 1.3K-FA and it works great.
https://www.vk-amps.com/collections/hf-amplifier-kits/products/a-55-db-rf-sampler-2kw-1-8mhz-80mhz-so-239-connectors

73/Sam
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w-u-2-o
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Re: Anan 7000 and mercury hookup

Postby w-u-2-o » Sat Feb 25, 2023 4:07 pm

A quick search also turned up the HFS-1.5 and DDS-1 from Precise RF: https://preciserf.com/product-category/couplers/

edit: you'll need a 20dB attenuator to go with those...
w4bf
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Re: Anan 7000 and mercury hookup

Postby w4bf » Tue Feb 28, 2023 11:48 am

My experience with ANAN 7000 and Mercury IIIS (A factory built one) :

The Mercury won't turn on LDMOS bias until it sees RF and if pure signal doesn't have some delay before it starts working, it gets
confused over lack of RF out during the time that it knows it is transmitting. It seems to take about 5 msec of RF before bias comes on.

To keep PS off at initial key up, I added 0.4 sec of delay in the MOX Wait time in the Linearity window. However, unless your audio system has a bit of a click at PTT activation to put out a few watts during that MOX wait time, you do have to start talking right after keying to get the bias going, else the MOX delay won't help.

I also had to check the STBL box. Not sure what STBL does, but without it, the Amp view showed intermittent amp gain/phase that I never saw when using my AL-80B.

At full 1200W out, the Pure Signal is really working hard to fix distortion, you can see the "Baluga whale" pattern as compared to my AL-80B at its rated 1000W.
Attachments
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w-u-2-o
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Re: Anan 7000 and mercury hookup

Postby w-u-2-o » Tue Feb 28, 2023 12:55 pm

w4bf wrote:My experience with ANAN 7000 and Mercury IIIS (A factory built one) :

The Mercury won't turn on LDMOS bias until it sees RF and if pure signal doesn't have some delay before it starts working, it gets
confused over lack of RF out during the time that it knows it is transmitting. It seems to take about 5 msec of RF before bias comes on.

To keep PS off at initial key up, I added 0.4 sec of delay in the MOX Wait time in the Linearity window. However, unless your audio system has a bit of a click at PTT activation to put out a few watts during that MOX wait time, you do have to start talking right after keying to get the bias going, else the MOX delay won't help.

That's great info! I wonder if the Mercury LUX is the same way?

I also had to check the STBL box. Not sure what STBL does, but without it, the Amp view showed intermittent amp gain/phase that I never saw when using my AL-80B.

If you want to learn what STBL and the other options do, there is a lot of of good information here: https://community.apache-labs.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=3166

At full 1200W out, the Pure Signal is really working hard to fix distortion, you can see the "Baluga whale" pattern as compared to my AL-80B at its rated 1000W.

Wow, that's really pretty bad. It doesn't seem like the Mercury IIIS is truly a 1200W amplifier. One would expect that an amp, a linear amp, that is rated for X Watts ought to deliver that much power linearly. At 1200W that amp is well into compression, and seemingly well past even the 1dB compression point. You can tell because the amp (blue) curve bends over toward the horizontal right around the 0.7 input/0.9 output level. It's more like a 1000W linear amplifier.

Note that the scales on the AmpView plot are linear and not logarithmic, it is not displaying power in decibels.

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