[Amps] Tubes vs. Solid State

[John Lyles]

Manfred, thank you for your sage advice and comments. Sounds like a fun project. I am stuck working with large tube amplifiers, 
a career path that has somehow fallen my way, so I don't get to play with sand much these days. LDMOS at 50 volts has come a 
long way to being "virtually" a replacement for a glass tube (3-500Z size for example).

There are now, being designed, tested and installed, 180 kW amplifiers at 352 MHz in Europe for particle accelerators. 350 kW isn't
far away. 600 kW is in the planning stages for one project. They are NOT cheap and NOT compact, as one might imagine. 
I can provide 3 MW peak or 450 kW average (CW) power from a single tube cavity amplifier at 200 MHz, in a fairly compact arrangement.
73
John 
K5PRO 

> I have been following this thread, and at some moments shuddered at what 
> some of you opine, and assented at what others write, and several times 
> I would almost have replied to something, to set it straight, but always 
> somebody did it before I got a chance.
> 
> Interesting thread, but I can't help the impression that most of the 
> people who give their opinions have never in their life actually 
> designed some piece of equipment, let alone a high power solid state 
> circuit of any sort. And many are also a bit weak in the field of vacuum 
> state power electronics.
> 
> I would like to tell you that I have been working over the last months, 
> as a background hobby work, on a project of a legal limit HF solid state 
> power amplifier. At this time I'm getting a pretty clean 1200 watts 
> output, and saturated 1700 watts, from 160 to 15 meters, with slightly 
> less power on 10 meters, from a set of MOSFETs costing a total of 75 
> dollars. No, the number is NOT missing a zero.