Hi all,
It's my humble opinion that this whole thread on how to cool high power
solid state amplifiers, using water (or evaporation, oil, freon,
whatever) is on the wrong track.
Instead of using high power amplifiers built basically like small signal
amplifiers on steroids, that is, transistors acting as RF-controlled
variable resistors that drop more or less of the supply's voltage to
produce the desired waveform, and thus incur in huge power loss that has
to be removed as heat, we should be building high efficiency amplifiers,
in which the transistors act as RF-controlled switches, so that the
power loss is tiny and can be easily handled with very modestly sized
heatsinks.
The broadcasters have been doing it for ages. It's about high time that
we "technologically advanced" hams do it too. A handful of hams are
actually doing it, but most hams still cling to antiquated and
inefficient technology, and that's really a shame.
I don't mean to blame any individual ham. For a single individual it
does take a considerable effort to think totally outside the box and
come up with a good, highly efficiency, low distortion power amplifier
that doesn't break the bank. But collectively we should be able to move
standard ham equipment technology from class AB linear amps to something
much better.
Manfred
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