[Elecraft] Dollars per watt (was: KPA500 - just 500 watts?)

[Alan Bloom]

On Tue, 2011-01-25 at 08:04 -0800, Vic K2VCO wrote:
...
> Speaking of dollars per watt, I'm presently using a homebrew pair of 813's which produce 
> 800 watts (QSK but no 6M) and I have less than $400 into it. $0.50 dollars per watt.

Many years ago I heard of a guy who built a linear amplifier using a
single 811.  He ran it in grounded grid with tons of negative RF
feedback (grid lifted way off RF ground with a small capacitor) so that
the gain was only a little greater than unity.

As I recall, the input RF driving power was 900 watts and the output
power was 1000W, the other 100W being supplied by the 811.  But since
amplifiers are rated by output power rather than [output - input] power,
his dollars per watt came out at something like 5 cents/watt.  :=)

Al N1AL