This all makes sense to me, but I was a little uncertain about Tom's
comments about tubes being on the way out. It seems to me (as a layman),
that high-power solid state amplifiers for amateur use haven't come very
far since (pardon the phonetic spelling) Helge Granberg's cover article in
QST maybe 25 years ago. There still is no legal-limit solid state amateur
amplifier that I know of, and the existing hardware all seems to require a
50-ohm load, is intolerant of operator errors, fragile, etc. I wonder who
will be the first to come up with a solid-state rendition of the Acom 2000A
-- 1500 watts output, full autotune, complete protective circuitry, and so
on. Could that be done today for the same price as the Acom, or are the
transistors and other bits still too expensive?
73, Pete N4ZR
The World HF Contest Station Database was updated 23 Feb 03.
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