[Amps] SPE 2K RTTY Duty Cycle

[Roger (K8RI)]

It is not the lack of regulation, although that is a contributor.

The market builds and sells what the market wants. If a large enough 
portion of the market wanted clean signals, we'd have clean signals!  
But the market wants super receivers with the mistaken notion that a 
super receiver will make sense out of the mess on the bands.  They/we 
hear that super crowded mess and think about receivers with sharp, steep 
sided selectivity. We hear what we think is receiver overload from what 
we think is lack of dynamic range.

SOMETIMES we are correct, but most of the time, not so much.
Super strong signals appear to cause front end overload, but most often 
the real problem is an over driven amp with a misconfigured exciter.  In 
most cases, or "in all but a few cases" the problem comes from the 
transmitted signal, not deficiencies in the receivers.

Unfortunately many of today's hams do not have the background to know 
where the problem lies.  What's really unfortunate is many old timers 
"who should know better" fall into the same trap, so receivers with 
Dynamic ranges, steep sided selectivity, adjacent channel rejection, and 
super sensitivity that is far beyond the noise floor on a quiet bad look 
like the ultimate answer.

Thrown into this mix is a ham's utopia. The ability to customize the 
characteristics of their signal.  That by itself "Probably" creates more 
crappy signals using up space on the bands than any other.  They 
basically added many previously unavailable ways to screw up signals.

"We know" pretty much the ideal band width as well as the upper and 
lower frequencies for cut off of an SSB signal. Equalization within that 
range should be OK,  Compression is OK within limits. However, if hams 
can squeeze a fraction of an extra db, out, they will, be it in power or 
audio response.  Overhead is available unused power. Never let it go to 
waste.  That works with tubes, but is why SS rigs sound crappy.

We are unlikely to see the really good tubes used in amps on the ham 
bands (except for home brew and imports) because of FCC limitations of 
gain and power.  We are unlikely to see SS legal limit amps with lots of 
headroom because if it's there it will be used, so to keep the price 
down it's not there.  With the power and gain of the really good tubes 
and hams willingness to use what's there, those regs are unlikely to 
change. Although there are a few exceptions, the good tubes have a plate 
dissipation of 3000 watts and up.

The market shows how narcissistic people (in this case, hams) can be.  
We demand receivers with characteristics so good, they have long since 
reached the level of bragging rights only.  IOW we are paying for 
receiver characteristics that will never prove useful until the 
transmitted signals are cleaned up and not even then for some.   We pay 
dearly for things we think will help us,(that won't) but little or none 
to put out a cleaner signal to help everyone else.  I'm ignoring 
contesters who intentionally distort their signals to be noticed,

BTW the FT5000 does not run hot at the rated power with that red button 
shoved in. That's where it is when I'm driving the amp.

73

Roger (K8RI)


On 5/22/2015 6:23 PM, Kevin Stover wrote:
> There is no economic or regulatory impetus to make the manufacturers build rigs like that so the point is moot.
>
>


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