"Dick Carroll;" wrote:

Paul Burridge wrote:

I have
to say, though, that I've always found it very curious that radio hams
refer to their bolt-on, high-power, aftermarket boosters as "linear
amplifiers." You can't get any *less* linear than class C!

??? ....I won't speak for the rest of ham radio, but I've never operated a linear
amplifier in Class C.

Dick

Reminds me of when I was in the Army in the late 60s. The colonel asked
me (translates to ordered me) to fix a bunch of mobile 1KW linear amps
belonging to the U. S. Mediterranean Mapping Mission. They used them on
trucks and jeeps but they had about 10 of the non-functional and they
were desperate. The units were Collins autotune push-pull linears and
had the Collins trademark of motors gears and bicycle chains. This was
familiar because I normally worked on 30KW Collins linears.

The colonel, for his part, somehow choked up schematics and a parts list
with FSNs. Word got out that I was doing this little job (small posts
have an FTL rumor network I think). Suddenly hams on post decended on me
for copies of the schematics and parts list. I had no idea how many hams
there were on post. I'm sure it was about 5% of the total military
personnel. I wonder still how many of them built the amplifiers (sans
autotune).

Chuck
--
... The times have been,
That, when the brains were out,
the man would die. ... Macbeth
Chuck Simmons