New Ham Net Tonight at 7pm Local Time: The Use of Amplifiers to Improve Communications

[Bob Bowden KB3BB]

Tonight's 7pm New Ham Net  on the DVRA 442.650 W2ZQ Repeater (Tx offset +5MHz, PL tone of 131.8 Hz required on your 447.650 MHz transmissions) will be all about the use of amplifiers to boost transmitted and / or received signals to improve communications.

Dave Casler KE0OG has put out an excellent YouTube video on the subject of HF transmit amplifiers https://youtu.be/k0xNPl5Z02c?si=-uHhEe7b23wQNaUA that you are encouraged to view either before or after attending tonight's Net, to more completely improve your understanding of what's involved when utilizing an amplifier to boost your transmitted HF signal. Of course, if you're a Technician operating below 30 MHz, you have an output power restriction equivalent to 200 Watts Peak Envelope Power (PEP) that applies below 30 MHz, but lately there are a number of excellent QRP transceivers that have maximum output power levels of 5W, 10W or 20W, so this subject may be of great interest to Technicians using these "QRP" transceivers who want to boost output power while complying with the 200 watt FCC power limitation for Technicians.

For Generals and higher, the power limitation on 10, 12, 15, 17, 20, 40, 75/80 and 160 Meters is 1500 Watts PEP. You don't want to use more power than you need, but you may want to have a higher power option available than you presently have, which may be 100 watts if you use a typical HF transceiver.

We'll be discussing all of this tonight, as well as a brief mention of the use of receive amplifiers for VHF and UHF bands.

I hope you can join us! If you can watch the video first, it may lead to some good questions for our group discussion.

- Bob Bowden KB3BB