2022-04-18, 21:04:31
Great review, Tom! I had forgotten about the 3 dB rule.
Few comments:
Wattmeters
PEP wattmeters are available. Professional instruments like Bird & Telewave cost more than some transceivers. There are lots of low cost meters marketed to hams e.g. MFJ, Daiwa, that say they measure PEP, but I'd want to verify it with a dummy load/oscilloscope setup before I trusted any of them. Measuring constant carrier as Tom suggests is much more straightforward.
Amplifiers
For the determined Basic+Honours ham, there are a few legal amps, like the 300 watt BLA350 from RM Italy (~$1600 CDN delivered from DX Engineering). 300W vs 100W may get your signal thru in some circumstances, but it's less than one S-unit improvement. SS amps are not very tolerant of mismatch, this one wants < 1.5 SWR so even a resonant dipole is marginal without a pricy tuner. I don't own one so don't really know anything first-hand, but you would be wise to research them well before typing in your CC#.
If I were going to spend $1600 I would seriously look at antenna improvements long before buying part of an S-unit!
73
Dave, VE3WI
Few comments:
Wattmeters
PEP wattmeters are available. Professional instruments like Bird & Telewave cost more than some transceivers. There are lots of low cost meters marketed to hams e.g. MFJ, Daiwa, that say they measure PEP, but I'd want to verify it with a dummy load/oscilloscope setup before I trusted any of them. Measuring constant carrier as Tom suggests is much more straightforward.
Amplifiers
For the determined Basic+Honours ham, there are a few legal amps, like the 300 watt BLA350 from RM Italy (~$1600 CDN delivered from DX Engineering). 300W vs 100W may get your signal thru in some circumstances, but it's less than one S-unit improvement. SS amps are not very tolerant of mismatch, this one wants < 1.5 SWR so even a resonant dipole is marginal without a pricy tuner. I don't own one so don't really know anything first-hand, but you would be wise to research them well before typing in your CC#.
If I were going to spend $1600 I would seriously look at antenna improvements long before buying part of an S-unit!
73
Dave, VE3WI