Personally, the 100W power output of the Orion was not even an issue when I
was looking at replacing the Mark V. To tell the truth, I was happy the
power is lower with the Orion; am using an Alpha and the power had to be
turned WAY DOWN with the Mark V. Though I haven't been in the market for a
new power amp, I don't know that I can think of any that I have owned or I
have looked at that require more than 100W to drive to full output power???
Since purchasing the Alpha (something you should do BEFORE getting married),
I have been quite surprised over the number of contacts I made with both the
Yaseu 1000 and the Orion, while waiting for the damn 3 min warm up on the
amp. I am sure I can quite safely say that my success rate was not cut by
50% when I dropped from 200W to 100W.
Additionally, the extra weight required for the 200W radio is not worth it.
If you want to move the FT-1000, it takes one body builder, or two average
men and a boy to budge it; I can actually take the Oriion off the desk
without asking two of the neighbors over for an "807" and then coherse them
to help me move the radio.
Excuse my ignorance, but why would you want to operate a SSB PA in class A
anyway? The radio is/was (so Yaesu said) designed as a "DXer's radio" (CW,
SSB & RTTY ). I could be wrong, but I haven't heard 1A4A or any other
DXpedition for that matter, switch to "broadcast quality AM" (or AM at all).
I would think you would want maximun power, not quality of speech??? But
maybe there is something to be said for using a "cranked up" RF speech
compressor before driving a class A amp. Personally, when I owned the
Yaesu, I never even tried switching over to Class A.
Dick K8ZTT
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