[Amps] Grid Vs cathode drive

[Peter Chadwick]

Will said:
> If the FCC hadn't screwed this up, amateur transceivers
most likely would have been built with a lower transmitting power.<

I don't know about that, since before the FCC ruling, there were plenty of rigs with a pair of 6146s (of various varieties) around. KWM2 for instance, and over here, the KW2000A. Not sure if the SB401 predated the FCC rule - I rather suspect it did. The early Yaesu rigs were around 100 watts output - the FL200B tx. Before 1960, the KW Viceroy was a SSB TX available in either 5 watt or 100 watt versions, and the 100 watt was the most popular. In AM days, the '100 watt' rig with a pair of 6146s or before that, a pair of 807s, was pretty popular - the DX100, for instance.
There are a lot of people who are stuck with 100 watts or so because of RFI problems, so I suspect the 100 watt transceiver would have been popular anyway. It was about the most you can run mobile without special power arrangements too, in the days of tube rigs.

So I think we'd have had the 'around the 100 watt rig' anyway - and thus the grounded grid amplifier follows somewhat naturally. But the FCC did screw up!.
73
Peter G3RZP