Interesting discussion about past and future higher power amplifiers. I recently sprung for a KPA500 and love everything about it. In fact my TT Centaur is available, if anyone is interested.
I have considered higher power -- and it does make some sense for me -- I am antenna limited. Rather than developing a new amplifier product, it occurred to me that Elecraft could sell more KPA500s if they made a two-amp coupler box to allow a pair to be run together. Since the drive requirements are typically 25 W, a 3 dB splitter should be able to easily drive a pair and a combiner could bring the outputs together -- matched cables required in and out. I could imagine a KPA sized front panel with the splitter and combiner inside, a 1200 W power indicator and duplicate control functions. I think the cost of a pair of KPA500s, and the control/splitter box might be competitive and allow an easy upgrade path for those with a single KPA500. Of course, the KPA500s could be in a closet, since all control is from the combiner box. That gets you 3 dB, rather than 5 -- but it will still be a seamless K3+ setup. Hard not to like, IMHO. The other argument goes like this -- as a mainly CW op, I remember the days when we were limited to 1000 W dc input -- typically a max of 700 W output on a good day. My KPA500 can put out an easy 600 W, within 0.7 dB of what I could only dream of while starting fires with my 811s as a kid who thought he knew everything <g> Regards, Joel Hallas, W1ZR Westport, CT ______________________________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm Post: mailto:Elecraft@mailman.qth.net This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html Message delivered to arch...@mail-archive.com
