[NLRS] Advice on 2M transverter, bricks

[Cathy James]

With spring approaching (hard as it may be to believe under all that 
snow), I'm starting to plan my 2M weak-signal station.  Some of you may 
remember that I've asked about transverters and rigs in the past.

eHam has very mixed reviews of the Down East Microwave 60W 2M 
transverter.  Elecraft's XV144 has superb reviews, but is only 20W.  I 
think the prices are similar.

For those of you who do moderately serious weak-signal CW and SSB work 
with a 3-element beam or less, what power do you find to be necessary?  
Will I need a brick behind the XV144 if I go that route?  What are some 
models of brick that are affordable and _readily available_?  I'm not 
interested in purchasing anything off of eBay or spending a year 
prowling hamfests hoping to find a particular model.

I would probably experiment with both my Uniden HR2600 and K2 to see how 
much difference the receiver makes.  I presume that I need to build the 
XV60 interface for the K2 to do this?

I'm currently building a 3-element quad from PVC and copper tubing, and 
hoping to get within sight of the theoretical gain for this design (9 
dB+).  Is this a reasonable gain figure for weak-signal, or am I going 
to find that everyone else is running 5 or 6 element beams?

Are many weak-signal ops running CW, or is most of the operation SSB 
these days?  I think CW will be much easier than SSB if I'm not running 
a mega-power station with a 50 foot beam...

Cathy
N5WVR