I'm rebuilding this old two way radio. I'm looking for a cost effective replacement. This discontinued/limited availability transitor was a very common Ham radio part. It was used to Drive the MRF422 finals on several transmitter amplifiers as well as The Kenwood TS930/TS940. They were prone to reliability problems and their heat sink mounting was poorly done from the manufacturer. For example: The frequncy controll memory was supplied by backup batterys, once they failed the radio would automatically change transmitting frequency, this would casue sudden severe heating of the final output board, the insulation varnish on the ferrite chokes was too thin and failed, shorting the chokes, the resulting surge blew the barrior diode and the result ++ heat melted the cheap plastic heat sink mountings. (Kenwood factory reps attributed the faiures to the power supply instead of the usual cause and effect.) It would take a few trys before the operator realized that the radio was transmitting on one frequency and recieving on another but by then the rest of the chain of events of the failure had begun.
Looking at the efficiancy of the MRF485 and the MRF 422, I'd rather not pay premium prices for a less than excellent results. Are there higher quality replacement parts? What is a Bipolar transistor used for anyhow, why are the Motorola/Kenwood specs so confusing? I have a difficult time believing that this radio has to run as hot as it's vacuuum tube predecessor, or that the final PA circuit is much more than a trasisorized version of the design that preceeded it. With any Transmitter, any gains in efficiany always seems to have a double performance payback. (Also true to radio transmtters, any mistake in operating it tends to result in needing to rebuild the final output amplifier as I'm doing now.)