On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 4:40 PM Al - KD2PNR via <ahw609=[email protected]> wrote:
I have had my la-1k for a few years now, and it has never gotten hot in SSB use (usually <500 W). I have recently found out how to solve a problem I had with it constantly going into SWR bypass in a digital mode, so am now trying to get some use out of it there. For the short transmission modes and activities it will likely be fine, however I do some nets and operations that have longer transmission times - sometimes more than a minute or maybe even two minutes. Obviously this is really a 100% duty cycle, but I am only driving it with 5 watts to get about 125 watts output. I am happy with that level of output, but when I made a longer transmission the temp quickly climbed up to 80 C! Fortunately that was the end of the message, or I would have had to terminate it. I am driving an 80m double bazooka single-band antenna with a native SWR of 1.02. The meter on the amp says 1.0. As a side note if I go through my HF-AUTO tuner, it shows a low SWR also, but the amp shows 1.2 or 1.3. I often see this when I use the tuner, the amp SWR is always about .1 to .3 higher than the tuner is showing. Given the nature of my digital operations I think it is better to just go direct to the antenna.