[Amps] MLA-2500

[n4zed at comcast.net]

Thanks for the input Eddy, Joe, Kimberly, Pete and Jeremy. There "is" one band that the load is "only" about 80% meshed, I think it's the 10 meter band positions, I don't use that band much so I don't really remember which one it is but, I do know it's one of the higher freq. bands might be 15 meter. I agree Eddy, I have never had an amp that required full mesh on "most of " the bands. This seems to be common with this amp, as I stated earlier others have had the same problem.

I guess I'll need to beg, borrow or steal a dummy load that will handle the power, I am feeding the amp into a HC-2000 tuner (inductive load) and then into a 400'  non-resonant loop with ladder line, the tuner has a balun in it. The tuner will tune to a 1:1 SWR on 80 - 10, I don't have a transmitter that will transmit on 160. I'm using RG-213 everywhere except the ladder line, no coax switches are in line at this time. I also have a Studdard(sp), similar to a Bird, watt meter to verify that the tuner is not lying to me about reflected power. 

Could the fact that I'm using a tuner and not a resonant antenna for each band cause this?

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Hi Ken,
 
NO amplifier that I've encountered has EVER operated with the loading
capacitor fully-meshed on ALL bands...
 
Something is definitely amiss, that goes beyond just design, IMHO.
 
Maximum capacitance at this spot indicates minimum loading. I concur with
what someone else said about first firing the amp into a TRUE non-inductive
52-ohm dummy load, to see what might happen...and try on ALL bands, too.
 
~73~ Eddy VE3CUI - VE3XZ