[TenTec] Future Tentec gear

[ac5e at comcast.net]

K5KVH says 42 Volts will be a mobile standard, and my local rumor mill says 48V, with a 24 cell battery with the same or very similar dimensions to a standard #24 battery. This supposedly will lighten cars by some hundreds of pounds of wiring. Hopefully the alternator will still churn out up to 3400 Watts to power for all the car's built in accessories plus our ham gear. 

But whether it's 42V or 48V - either will make designing and building a high power amplifier simpler since the current draw will be less by a factor of 3.5 to 4. And an AC power supply can be made much lighter for the same reason. 

However, I hope the new generation of high power devices is quieter than the last bunch I had anything to do with. Between shot and partition noise they got really noisy, really fast. And that's one of the reasons I tend to frown on 200 Watt rigs. Every one of them I have tried were noisy enough to make operating a second station in the neighborhood difficult. 

73  Pete Allen  AC5E