Hi Guys, here is $0.02 worth. The stock Ranger has a 7500 ohm primary, 3500 ohm secondary modulation transformer at about 15 watts rated, which means that a 3500 ohm plate/screen load would reflect 7500 ohms to the modulator tubes. It is true that as the plate load increases ( lighter loading, that a higher load will be reflected to the modulators which reduces their maximum available output without any distortion. You will be able to carry this only so far and then the modulators put out square waves instead of sine waves. Bob Bruene published quite a bit about this form of high level clipping in QST. My Ranger runs into a high power pad at nearly normal power to keep all this stuff in balance. All of the ideas here are ok, as witnessed by many sucessfull results. I just wanted to put a tad of theory in. Lowering the power to get Ultra Modulation from the 1614 makes the competing stuff pass each in the opposite directions.. 73 Mike K4XM
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