I put the “troublesome” TS-930S back on the bench again yesterday to investigate its PA instability some more.  A few points are worth mentioning:

1. The instability onset power gets lower with increasing frequency.  That is, at 7 and 14 MHz, the instability onset is at about 60 watts output.  At 28 MHz, that drops to 40 watts.
2. I was able to increase the onset power slightly by increasing the resting bias of the MRF-422/2SC2510A pair from 1.1 A to 1.5 A.  I don’t know if that was a real effect or just a coincidence, though.
3. I tried adding 0.001 uF, 0.1 uF, and 4.7 uF capacitors shunting the 28B line to ground to remove RF that I observed on that line during transmit.  I don’t have a good measurement of the amount of RF, yet.  But, I know that it’s the same frequency as the transmitter because it varies as I change bands.

I still need to find that Helge Granberg article from RF Design to locate the references.  Still counting my lucky stars that I haven’t destroyed anything in the course of these experiments.

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