| W3MMI |
Rating:      |
2015-04-07 | |
| Excellent amplifier |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I've only had the amplifier for 2 months, so this is my first impressions of the amp. My copy is serial number 00068. The fit and finish is just fine with this amp, I'm getting an easy 1200 watts out on all bands with around 50 to 55 watts of drive. I also got a radio interface cable when I bought the amp, with the interface cable the amplifier changes bands right along with the radio, it's like having a 1200 watt radio. I paired this amplifier with the 1500 watt automatic antenna tuner, the MFJ - 998 Intellituner, they work very well together. I also have the interface cable that goes to the FTdx-3000 radio to the Intellituner. When I change bands, all I have to do is, put the amplifier in standby, push the tune button on the radio, put the amplifier back in operate, and your ready to go. Yes, the tube amplifiers are nice to look at, and maybe the tubes can take some abuse, but these new solid state amplifiers have all the protection circuits built in. You just can't beat the convenience of a solid state amplifier.
I've been running this amplifier about eight hours a day, seven days a week. Not a single problem, not even a fault. It just sits there and does it's thing. I generally run 1200 to 1250 watts on SSB, on the lower bands. It never seems to get hot, you can hear the cooling fans running, but they are not loud enough to be objectionable. The power supply is on the floor under the station, I don't even notice the fan noise from it, and you don't get all that excess heat that you get from a tube amplifier.
I believe Ameritron has come up with a real WINNER with the ALS-1306 Amplifier. If your looking for a near legal limit, solid state, and automatic band changing amplifier, put this near the top of your list. You won't be disappointed.
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| K8AC |
Rating:     |
2015-03-29 | |
| Well done design in a nice package |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
No problems after a couple of days in operation. The RF deck and power supply are separate units and can easily be moved around even by old guys like me. As expected, the claim of "quiet" fans is a bit exaggerated - there are multiple fans in the amplifier and one in the power supply and while they're not loud, neither are they quiet. The remote band switch is a nice feature, but it won't work with the Ten-Tec Orion (and maybe other Ten-Tec rigs). For that, you'll need to build the little adapter box as described by AD5X and make up your own cables. If you want QSK operation, you'll need the separate Ameritron QSK-5 box, priced around $400. The manual doesn't mention the recommended maximum power level for continuous carrier modes such as RTTY. I ran a quick test with 510 watts output into a dummy load and the PA over-temperature protection cut out after 3 minutes and 15 seconds at an ambient temperature of 70 degrees. There are also protection circuits for excessive SWR, amp combiner imbalance (there are two separate 600W amps) and having the bandswitch set to the wrong band. The amplifier operates on 10 meters right out of the box - no modifications required, and of course it covers 6 meters. While the manual includes schematics for the amplifier unit, there are no diagrams for the switching power supply. The forward wattmeter reads within 5% of my N8LP LP-100A. While the manual says the amplifier requires 100 watts of drive power or less, I didn't need any more than 60 watts to drive the amp to 1,200 watts out on any band (6 meters not tested). My Orion II shows the SWR on the amplifier input to be 1.0:1 on 160 through 10 meters.
The amplifier cabinet is 17 1/2 inches deep, but the feet will fit OK on a 15 inch deep shelf. Note that the fan exhaust is on the lower left side of the cabinet so you may not want other equipment close on that side (manual says 2 inches clearance recommended). Air intake is on the top and lower right side, so you can have other equipment mounted on a shelf above, provided you follow the 2 inch clearance. I haven't seen (on a panadaptor) or heard any birdies or hash from the switching power supply on any bands. The amp is ready to deliver full output in 5-6 seconds after turning it on. The front panel design makes for easy operation and the metering shows power supply parameters as well as forward and reflected power. The remainder of the cabinet has the usual marginal paint job (paint missing on rounded corners) and does not fit well in places. I expected better given the price.
I attempted to call Ameritron with a couple of questions, but found the telephone number provided to be busy all day every day. They do answer email questions within 2-3 days. If Ameritron had provided an interface for the remote band switching for my Orion II, I'd have given the amp a 5 rating. Overall, it's a well designed package but definitely not for the die-hard RTTY enthusiast. |
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| AA6SC |
Rating:      |
2015-03-17 | |
| So far so good |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| This is my first Ameritron product. After months (years?) of reading about cold solder joints, loose hardware rattling around inside the cabinet and so forth I read the reviews and comments about the ALS-1306 being a redesigned ALS-1300 that makes hams happy. On that basis I ordered one and am glad I did. Automatic Band Select is grand. As long as the load (the antenna and its coupler) are reasonably close to resonance, everything works well. (Incidentally, it's not only about the standing wave ratio. Net reactance should be close to zero to obtain a purely resistive load. The two go hand-in-hand. But everyone knows that, right?) While we're at it, any "tuner" (coupler) must go between the amp and the antenna, NEVER between the transceiver and the amp. It's the amp that needs to "see" a resistive (non-reactive) load. Okay. Back to the Ameritron ALS-1306 amplifier. It's easy to set up and use. Keep the excitation level low and—after tuning is complete—bring the exciter (your transceiver or transmitter) level up slowly while watching the meters on the amp. In my case, on 40 meters 24 watts at the amp's input produces 500 watts at the output. The instructions mention this. Make sure to set the Multimeter knob to REF to monitor the power reflections. (The right-hand meter's right-hand scale is marked "Reflected(W)" and that's the one to watch. That meter should move little or none when transmitting.) Yes, I'm overstating the obvious to old-timers, but a lot of newbies have joined our ranks, and need our help. I like my new 1306 and hope others will also. Tnx es 73 de AA6SC |
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| KD0LRG |
Rating:      |
2015-03-09 | |
| Great amp for the money |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Have been using this amp since the 10m contest and it has worked great. I have it set up with a IC 7600 and the remote band change works great.
Just got done working the ARRL DX and it didn't give me any problems. Also used it for W1AW/0 and was able to work the pile and bring order to a giant cluster. Having 6m for VHF contesting and the built in remote band switching is what made this a great deal. Here is the best part you turn it on and go, no more waiting 3 minutes for a amp to warm up.
I have had many reports of having the biggest signal and this amp gets part of the credit. |
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| WA6ZTY |
Rating:     |
2015-02-28 | |
| Power Limitation in RTTY mode |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| Although not mentioned in the manual or advertizing, Ameritron recommends limiting power to 500 watts in RTTY, FM, or other high duty factor modes. This came in response to my query to customer support. |
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| KE4KMG |
Rating:      |
2015-01-29 | |
| Love this Amp! |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| Just got it this month (Jan) and so far so great! Works great on all bands, have not been on 6 meters yet. Worked many DX and in Contesting with no problems. Using Palstar AT-Auto tuner from Kessler Engineering and together is a fine pair. Antenna's: Alpha-Delta DX-BP and Hy-Gain Thunderbird TH3. I would recommend this amp to anyone. I will post later after been used even more, Love it! |
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| W3FRG |
Rating:      |
2015-01-14 | |
| A good reliable Solid State Amp |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
I received the ALS-1306 in Dec 2014, SN 075, after a 2.5 month wait. HRO DE had it dropped shipped to my door.
It is used almost every day, principally on SSB, on the low bands. Normally run it at the 1Kw output level on voice peaks.
I also have it band tracking, using the DB-DB7DK cable, with my TS-590S and it works great.
As recommended by Ameritron, I do not use the ALC option.
I just set the TS-590S output at 55 watts and go.
I like the front panel layout much better than the ALS-1300, which I had previously for some two yrs.
I have had no issues, other than those created by myself or the lack of instructions, with the unit. |
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| KG7MZ |
Rating:      |
2015-01-03 | |
| I am very impressed with this amp and it has my recommendation |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
Ameritron ALS-1306 Ser No 00054 Initial Review
Summary:
I am very impressed with this amplifier and it has my recommendation.
Santa (AKA an awesome XYL) left me an ALS-1306 under the Christmas tree this year. Being home a lot for the holidays I have now had several days to operate and test it. About 150 QSOs so far with several lengthy rag chews. Here are some of my observations that you might find useful.
Power output rating is very conservative. It very easily does 1.2 KW on all bands. The required drive to achieve 1.2 KW varies from 40 watts to 54 watts depending on the band. In all cases though, it reaches 1.2 KW before any significant compression kicks in.
Although the amp is easily driven to max rating with minimal drive, the gain does decrease slightly during the first 10 seconds of each transmission. (5 to 10%). I spoke with Ameritron and they noted that this is a normal automatic adjustment to avoid runaway gain or bias as the transistors warm up. This makes sense to me and it makes no difference in performance or signal quality.
It sounds really good on the air. Sound quality is smooth and linear and multiple conversations with other hams looking at their scopes showed very clean bandwidth at 1.2 KW output.
The RF deck has mostly new boards with printed dates showing manufacture within the last few months. This is different than some of the prototype pictures that we have seen on the net that had older boards that were re-worked.
The amplifier runs very cool. Even after a long winded coast to coast rag chew at 1.2 KW, and with significant transceiver compression, there is no detectable warming of the exhaust air when felt by hand.
The fan runs much faster than it needs to when not transmitting. (On the RF Deck). This did surprise me since I expected very low fan speed until the cooling is called for, like the Elecraft KPA-500. The fan noise at idle is slightly louder than my AL-811H. It is over cooled enough that even running full throttle on SSB, it does not warm up enough to increase fan speed. I wondered if the fan was stuck on one speed so I did a dead key test with 400 watts into a dummy load. After about 2 mins of dead key, there was a slight warming of the exhaust air and the fan speed slowly started to speed up, but only slightly. After about 5 mins of dead key, the fan speed did rise more and the exhaust air warmed up a little more but still was about lukewarm. I would opine that the cooling is excellent on the RF deck but the resting fan noise is more than necessary. I am not very concerned about this since a simple speed control mod would be easy. A slight rework at the factory would be recommended though.
The power supply seems to have only one speed on the fan but that is not an issue since it sits under my desk.
The paint on the case seems to be a step up in quality. It has some slight texture and looks/feels very nice. Fit and finish in and out is very good. The boards are clean and the solder joints that I could see looked well done.
My history with 27 years of hamming has been mostly with tube amplifiers. This is a real pleasure to operate without having to touch-up my tuning every time I move up the band or change bands.
My main antenna is a Butternut HF9V so I do not use an antenna tuner. I have a low SWR on all bands (<1.4 to 1) except 17 meters which is 2 to 1. The only faults that I have had at all were on 17 meters once I reached about 900 watts PEP. The high SWR protection kicked in perfectly and the amp went into bypass mode. Below 900 watts PEP it worked just fine, even at 2 to 1 SWR. There have been no SWR faults on any other bands.
For additional reference, my transceiver is an Elecraft K3 and I do not use an ALC line. The K3 has independent power output per band. My line voltage is 235v. The power supply voltage on the ALS-1306 meter is 49v resting, and 47v under full load. The power output meter is within 8% of my other meters.
I hope to hear you on the air!
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| KB8O |
Rating:      |
2014-12-27 | |
| Solid Amp |
Time Owned: 0 to 3 months. |
| Very happy with the Amp. I have it set up with my Icom 7600 and a Palstar HF Auto into a 1100 foot loop antenna. I run it all bands 160-6. 40w input gets me an easy 1200w out and it follows the radio like it's not even there. Very happy with the AMP would buy it again. |
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