[Amps] Re: Drake L7 newbie

[Thomas R. Williams]

Got the amplifier yesterday. What a beauty! I purchased it on eBay from someone who advertised it as brand new, never used. It was exactly that. Not a scratch or speck of dust anywhere, and the Eimac 3-500's looked like they just came off the assembly line. Not bad for a 24 year old amp.

The L7 uses rather low plate voltage from what I read about in other handbooks; 1760 V at 0.565 A. This works out to about 1 kW input power and about 600 Watts output. I know this is the published rating for this amplifier, but my little SB-201 puts out the same power with a pair of 572B's. I would think that the amp is capable of more, and the rating was put on it to be conservative. In the SSB mode, the plate voltage is 2400 V. 

Now for my questions. What are users of this amp typically running it at and is 600 W output all I should expect on CW? Can higher voltage be used without exceeding the ratings of the tubes or amp itself?

73,
Tom N2CU <><