About a week ago, I had 5 of those transformers in my cart Alan. When I was ready to order, they only had 3 available to ship. In a way, you helped me. I've been ordering an awful lot from Mouser recently, and you helped me trim a few dollars off this most recent order :-)
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I haven't done too much comparison between the 2N2/40+ and the Norcal kit version, but the 2N2/40+ could be a bit cheaper to build. It uses homebrew diode ring mixers instead of ADE-1's, and 3 x 2N2222A's in the final, instead of a single 2SC5739.? Sadly, the 2SC5739 is now obsolete. You can buy pulled versions online for around $12. I believe that the 2SC2166 and 2SC2078 are direct drop-in replacements. The nice thing about the 2SC5739 (and presumably the other equivalent CB type PA transistors) is that you can get 4 or 5W out with a single transistor. They have good gain too, so they don't need as much drive as other similar transistors. By comparison, the 3 x 2N2222A's in the 2N2/40+ only give about 2 watts. On the other hand, there's something very appealing about 2N2222A's. They're very cheap, and they're not going to be obsolete anytime soon. They will probably be among the very last through-hole small signal NPN transistors to become unavailable!
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I have about 250 PN2222A's here, along with a handful of the metal can ones. Now I'm thinking I should bite the bullet and buy 1,000. That way, when the apocalypse comes, and everyone else is out of parts, I'll still be able to build anything I want with the ubiquitous 2N2222A! :D
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Dave
AA7EE
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