[Amps] Overdrive protection

[jhurry at austin.rr.com]

A properly designed amp should be able to take care of itself.  ALC is a ham carry over from when there were no Drive controls, so the ALC was used to bring down the power in the Swan/Galaxy days to keep from burning up the sweep tubes in the amps.  Some of the resent solid state amps have relied on alc to protect their poor designs.  The good amps, like the SGC 500 takes care of itself internally.   Running all the controls to the right is not only poor operation habits, but a poorly setup ALC can generate a worse signal on the bands as a poorly tuned amp, and still be just as tough on the tubes.   Best to not use it and tune the station properly in the first place.  Many times "overshoot" is a result of some gain set too high,  be it mic, drive, alc, compression,  or not enough delay from keyup to RF output.  I've seen some radios, just disconnect the mic and any overshoot goes away.   

Dudley
WA5QPZ
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