[NLRS] 2304?

[Dr. Gerald N. Johnson]

I brought home the 2304 1 watt DEMI transverter from MUD in October. I 
haven't yet fired it up. Been working on antenna ideas some with a 2x3 
ft WiFi skeleton reflector including variations on K4QF's log period 
feed that I published in the proceedings for CSVHF and MUD this year. 
There is still work to be done there.

Living 165 miles from the twin cities and at least that far from the 
Quad Cities, near the Boondocks
(https://www.flickr.com/photos/22711505@N05/24151165432)
looking at the propagation data in the International Microwave Handbook 
and 2304 contest activity for the last couple years of ARRL contests it 
appears to me that 1 watt even with 20 dB antenna gain isn't going to 
make those paths work, there might be a chance of working a couple 
rovers from home, but that can't run up lots of points. And aiming a 
20dB gain antenna won't be easy.

Looks like if I get on I'll need to either rove to Chicago or the twin 
cities or add a PA, perhaps 50 watts to stay in the low power class in 
ARRL contests. Looking at VHF conference and MUD publications for the 
past decade or so, it appears the most popular PAs come from Pyro Joseph 
as the Spectrian boards, single or grouped for several hundred watts 
output. Are there other practical options. There was a post a few weeks 
ago about another package but when I looked at the conversion article it 
looked almost as easy to build from scratch as to drag the PA from 1900 
to 2304. Looking at Mouser.com I see some reasonably priced 25 to 50 
watt GAN parts without internal matching so they are good from HF to a 
few GHz depending on the part. Has there been any work making them work 
for multiple bands? Most of the solid state amplifier circuits I've seen 
are single band using shunt capacitors and a length of line, sometimes a 
quarter wave as a Pi network transformer and low pass filter. That makes 
them single band. I have some hardware on hand for 902 and 1296 that it 
would be nice to get on too, but no working power amps.

So what are my options for power on 2304? Used Spectrian, or pay Pyro 
Joseph's price and go from there?

73, Jerry, K0CQ