[Elecraft] KW Amp Prices

[Vic Rosenthal]

DYARNES at aol.com wrote:

> If you spend  one 
> tenth of that amount sprucing up your antenna system you will get more  benefit. 

If you already have a 'basic tribander' or similar on a 40-foot tower, the next 
step up is to a 'serious' beam on a 70 foot tower.  That will cost you more than 
most amps, and in many cases is impossible because of neighbors, zoning, etc. 
If your antenna is currently a hamstick, then, yes, spruce it up first!

> Anything more  than a couple hundred watts just 
> creates QRM--it becomes brute force  rather than technique!  

Suppose you have a couple of hundred watts and you are trying to work DX on 160 
meters.  There will be lots of times that you call a station and he simply 
doesn't hear you.  If you are just below the noise level at his location, a 
couple of DB may put you just over, and you will be heard.  You can work a lot 
of DX with low power, but that doesn't mean that there's no value in higher power.

> In truth, I'm just a tad  disappointed that a company, which has such strong 
> roots in lower power  equipment and innovation, finds it necessary to jump into 
> the QRO market.   I realize that everyone has to make a living somehow, but 
> the incredible talent  in that company could seemingly be much better utilized 
> in a thousand other ways  than amps.  I can only conclude that the markup must 
> be phenominal!

I find this statement offensive.  Your personal prejudices are not moral 
imperatives.  There's nothing evil about QRO, and a manufacturer selling QRO 
equipment is not profiting from sin.  Given the short transmitting duty cycle 
and the relatively small amount of time we spend operating, the additional 
energy expended by QRO station compared to a 100 watt station is small indeed. 
The markup is not phenomenal, by the way.  If you have ever built high power 
gear either with tubes or solid-state devices, you know that the cost of the 
components is much greater.

In the US we are permitted by our license to use 1500 watts.  We are also 
required to use the minimum amount of power necessary to maintain communication 
in any particular case.  I suggest that we improve ourselves morally (and 
legally) by trying to follow this last rule rather than beating up on the 
manfacturers of amplifiers.

-- 
73,
Vic, K2VCO
Fresno CA
http://www.qsl.net/k2vco