[CQ-Contest] Amps

[Hal Kennedy]

In answer to the question about which amps for SO2R, I run a pair of 
ACOM 2000A's.

Good:
-  Very reliable
- Tube cost relatively low
- Full power.  Loafs at 1500W out.  Many of the "full power" amps are as 
low as 1100 W on 24.9 and 28 MHz.
-  Remote head.  My two heads take almost no room on the op desk. The 
amps themselves are in a closet.
-  Very complete instrumentation and fault protection
-  Amazingly quiet
- Very fast band changing.  10M to 160M in less than a second.
- Decent interface software if you don't want to send one dit to make it 
change bands
- Excellent service (Thanks, Array Solutions)
- Legal.  This means a lot to me personally.  You might be able to go to 
1800 or 1900 Watts with manual tuning.  Manual tuning is a horrendous 
PIA however.  The amp auto-tunes to 1500W.  This is not a 2 tube Alpha 
77 or a Henry 8K or an EMcom 3K, 4K or 5K.  Its a sad commentary that 
people using those amps do so without shame.

Bad:

- Price (and good luck finding a used one, although it does happen - 
rarely).  The other big amps that are very good are also very expensive.
- 150 second warm up.  Not a big deal.

GL & 73,
Hal
N4GG