If you cant afford a very good amplifier build it yourself. If you cant afford a decent amplifier you can build one that will outperform and outlast any ham commercial amplifier.
The Chinese tube industry is in the same position as the Russian tube makers. The market is small and there is not much demand. So who knows what the availability of these Chinese tubes will be in the future.
At least if you use a tube thats widely used in industry like the 8877, you have a good chance of finding and buying one. Who in the west uses FU728's? Answer nobody.
The moment these Chinese Amps hit the USA market the price of the tubes will skyrocket. The Chinese are also price gouging on what they charge for their amps. Is it coincidence that
Chinese amps are priced virtually identical to the OMPOWER pricing. They making a absolute killing. Last time I looked the Emtron Amplifiers from Australia were selling for a cheaper price than these Chinese Amps.
The days of tubes amplifiers are fast coming to the end. 2kW solid state amps will be the norm in the next 2 years. Why would you tool up for something thats going to be obsolete?
Besides the bottom line with anything Chinese is that it is Cheap Junk, despite what other say about the quality improving sometime in the future.
If you look at the lathe market the same thing has happened. Chinese lathes flooding the market. Despite years of manufacture the chinese lathes are nowhere as good as the lathes that were manufactured
in Europe and the USA. There is always some problems with the Chinese lathe quality and design, they poor quality with lots of bigs. Thats junk in my book.
I would rather send my money to Slovakia and support a company that made a sincere effort to design and build decent amplifiers for the ham market.
Why would anyone want to support these Chinese knock off crooks is beyond belief. Its amusing to read that so many Americans are so pro anything thats cheap. I wonder how many of them
actually realize how the Chinese are really destroying their economic might by destroying the manufacturing base in the USA. Very soon the USA will have no manufacturing industry and everyone in the USA
will be consumers of Chinese manufactured goods. I wonder who is going to be the Sheriff of the world when you can afford to be one because your manufacturing base is gone offshore? So much for patriotism.
I think that there could be a market for an American designed but Chinese built amplifier. Amplifiers are getting hideously expensive and I don't see a problem of the Chinese building amplifiers as long as it's not a stolen design. Taiwan already has a big market of contract manufacturers and it could be another option. Have you ever opened up a LDG tuner and compare it against a naked MFJ tuner? It's like night and day.
73,
Jonathan W6GX
