1kW 144MHz Amp Lives!

Those of you who have been following my 144 MHz 1kW amplifier project (previous posts machining heatsinks, soldering transistor down and building the pallet) will, I’m sure, be delighted to hear that I have had life out of the amplifier. In excess of 1 kW, I hasten to add!

The amplifier was able to maintain in excess of 1000W for over 2 minutes.  At this point, the Bird dummy-load started to get a bit warm, so a longer test was abandoned. The amplifier pallet, however, remained cool enough to touch. As the F1JRD original design notes, the 10-Ohm coax balun does become hot (Lionel suggests around 120C at 1kW with no cooling). I, however, used a small fan running slowly to provide a gentle draft which greatly reduced the balun heat.

The next step is to add the Dallas-Maxim DS18B20 temperature sensor – the idea is to have the sensor buried into the pallet next to the transistor, to measure the copper heat spreader temperature.