Just curious: Do people still build linears with tubes and HV supplies
or is it much cheaper now to use transistors? Mine were all tubes but
that was about 20 some years ago when FETs and BJT were just way out
there in terms of cost.

As one example: Ameritron builds solid-state ham-band amplifiers of up
to 600 watts output (their "ALS" series). Starting at the 600-watt
point, and going up to the 1500-watt legal limit, Armitron's amps are
all based on tubes. There are legal-limit HF amps which use only a
single tube (e.g. a 3CX1500A/8877 triode, running at about 2500 volts)

According to a talk I saw recently, commercial television broadcasters
have moved almost exclusively to solid-state RF amplifiers for their
newer stations. No one set of transistors can provide thenecessary
power, so the amps use a large number of smaller modular amplifiers
operating in parallel - I think the basic "brick" we were shown was
capable of a couple of hundred watts. I haven't seen any ham-band
amplifiers using this modules-in-parallel approach, although I'm
sure one could be built.

--
Dave Platt AE6EO
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