[Amps] Slow start-up of Amps on CW

[Jim Brown]

On 3/11/2024 10:19 AM, David Gow wrote:
> Most modern transceivers have a menu setting that will delay the first
> letter transmission for a milliseconds after the amp has been switched to
> transmit.  If the amplifiers have mechanical relays this is needed both to
> avoid cutting off letters and to avoid hot switching.switching.

Neighbor K6XX, an engineer at Elecraft, had a long history with tube 
amps before working on their power amps as a manufacturing engineer. 
 From him, I learned that for amps with a good vacuum relay, an 8 msec 
setting for that delay was enough.

The owner of Ten Tec was a serious CW op; their amps were designed for 
full QSK. I owned three of their first big amp, the Titan 425, and ran 
it that way. The only downside was that you could go through relays in 
CW contesting. All of those three amps were bought used, and I changed 
out the relays of two of them when they failed in the middle of a 
contest. That caused me to abandon QSK until I could afford to buy used 
87As a decade later. Their diode R/T switching allows full QSK. So do 
the Elecraft KPA500 and KPA1500.

73, Jim K9YC