Firstly, when I say Ten Tec may as well throw in the towel and get out of
the amp business, I have more in mind than the cw devotees who exist here on
the Ten Tec reflector. Beyond this, is a whole ham radio world of people
with amps who have no need for QSK. It may be important to you all, but
the vast majority of hams running amps are running data, or working on
phone. In fact, of all the modes, cw and psk 31 are the only two that
usually do not need QRO.
You can go on at length about how it took N man-hours to engineer a QSK
circuit, the LED watt meter and the labor to add them on each unit, but it
doesn't change the fact that most hams won't pay $1K for that and most hams
look at the power supply, tank circuit, band switch, ....you know, the
things that have to be there to call it an amp?....when making a buying
decision.
The Centurion p.s. is known to be a problem--the stock supply puts out
around 2.8, maybe 2.9 KV and drops down to around 2.5 or 2.6 Kv under load.
For the kind of dough they want now, that is frankly, unacceptable. The
stock h.v. transformer has been a known defect for years now--search the
archive of this list, search eham reviews, maybe the amps reflector--there
are cases of failure out there--I went through two before I got a Dahl
transformer which Ten Tec should have been using all along like most amp
manufacturers, but instead they keep using some product from some unknown
company in Canada they have never identified as far as I know. If you want
to pay $3200 for that be my guest.
I used to see signs of sloppy workmanship in the AL82 a few years ago. Not
anymore. I was at Dayton in May and looked at Ameritron's amps. They are
not laden with bells and whistles but in the things that count such as the
power supply, the quality is there for a lot less money.
73,
rob / k5uj
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