Positive Anode Magnetrons.

This report describes an effort to establish a cost-effective technology for positive-anode magnetrons used by the Navy. This technology was first applied to reduce the cost of tubes used in commercial weather and marine radar. Commercially available, standard, inexpensive parts and the results of analysis of part cost tolerances vs cost and complexity of fixturing provided the technology base. The tubes fabricated during this program were all sub-specification. Some tubes exhibited one or more problems such as excessive spurious output, low efficiency and low output power. The last four tubes made were free of spurious emissions but were low in output power. This program demonstrated that there are techniques available to reduce the fabrication cost of tubes, but the program also showed that the changes could indirectly affect rf performance and could require tube design changes. Author