[Elecraft] PROs/CONs on KPA100

[Andrew Moore]

> If you have the KPA100 option installed I would be interested in hearing
> your take on it.  I'm mainly interested in the things that you found out
> (good and otherwise) after you installed it as opposed to what you
> considered before buying it. 

Biggest pro: the entire section remains disabled (no current drain) until required by dialing up the power potentiometer.  Your QRP K2 stays just that until you choose to go over 12-ish watts.

Biggest con: the fan.  I find it loud and distracting, and even after the KPA100 cools down to threshold temperature, the fan remains on until an event such as transmittion of CW sig.  This means if the fan kicks in during high power transmit, then you go back into receive mode to listen to the other station for a while, fan remains on (loudly) forever, and I deliberately have to send a CW dit to force it to (re-evaluate temp?) and turn itself off.  This potentially confuses the op on the other end who thinks I'm trying to get his attention.

If it doesnt' really work that way, please correct me, but that's been my experience.

That said, it's a great module.  There when I need it, disabled when I don't.  I sold mine very recently after MUCH deliberation.  Sad to see it go but I'm doing more QRP nowadays and trying to pare down.

nv1b