BACKGROUND AND HISTORY
This article was originally published in the September 1987 issue of “Amateur Radio Magazine” and was presented in two parts. It was felt at the time that the format of the article, the art work and the way it was published never gave full justice to this project. There were many mistakes in the art work and the magazine never published a full size PCB overlays or easy to follow wiring instructions. In truth it was a waste of a “dam good” constructional project.
At the time my brother and I had built a number of power supply units but had never attempted to build anything that was capable of supplying more then around 10 amps. The most successful design of the day was the PW Marchwood by Nick Allen-Rowlandson BSc G4JET, published in Practical Wireless June and July 1983. This was a huge 30 amp design and one of the first to be published in a constructional magazine. This opened the door to the possibility of designing and building a similar unit and for the first time a 42 Amp, 16 volt transformer became available off the shelf at reasonable cost.
With that in mind we set about designing a similar unit and the result was the article published in Amateur Radio Magazine. I rediscovered the original plans a few weeks ago and decided I would republish them in electronic format in a form of Internet Web pages and make this long forgotten design available again to anyone who might be interested in building a homemade, high currant power supply or indeed anyone just interested in reading about and looking at the design.
We could never take much credit for the design, it’s all basic stuff taken from other circuits, reworked and made to fit our requirements. Where I think this design did differ is it was always planned that the average constructor should be able to build and get this unit working and end up with a useful high currant PSU that would last many years. My unit dates back to 1987, as I write this it is now October 2007 some twenty years later. Yes, the PSU is still going strong out living my old TS440 and a TS850 plus numerous high currant VHF transceivers. All the photographs you will see have been taken from the original some 20 years after it was built. I feel that is a good recommendation in itself.I wish to dedicate this publication to Steven Goodier, G4KUB who lost his fight against cancer 14 years ago. I think he would be pleased to see this Power Supply Unit see the light of day again and I know he would take great delight in knowing that other constructors are once again enjoying building the unit as we did twenty years ago.
John Goodier G4KUC / G8VHF
PSU Design
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