After getting my Full License I decided to buy myself a present. With my full license I can use 400 watt of power on most bands. My current transmitter only does 100 watt so I “needed” an amplifier.
After some searching I decided on the, widely used, Ameritron 811HD. This is a multi band HF amplifier with a max of 800 watt power. I will under drive it to only use the 400 watt allowed. Anything over this will anyway not be good because my antennas are in my shack. If I use 800 watt and touch my dipole antennas I will probably drop dead on the spot. Well ok, let’s say I will get a nice shock, to say the least!
The thing I didn’t think about was that, next to the linear I would need some other things. Next to the extra cables to drive it (Yaesu has their own cable which set me back 35 euros), I also need thicker coax cable. The one I’m using now is RG58, which is to thin for this kind of power. I guess I will get the thicker RG213, but I’m not sure yet what is the best thing to do. Maybe I will just try first what the RG58 will do. If it melts away I know to get better cable! 😉
UPDATE (Oct 22, 2012): After getting some advice from a fellow Radio Amateur, and friend, I decided to go for the Aircell 7 coax instead. All reviews about this type are very positive! I already replaced all of my coax with this type.
Some picture of my new addition:
Ameritron 811HD
Ameritron 811HD in the shack