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Reviews For: Hardrock 500 Power Amplifier Support Kit

Category: Amplifiers: RF Power - HF & HF+6M

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Review Summary For : Hardrock 500 Power Amplifier Support Kit
Reviews: 2MSRP: $1200 (NEEDS AMPLIFIER)
Description:
Supportkit to support the RF-Powertools AN1819 RF amplifier, resulting in a 500W HF-band amplifier
Product is in production
More Info: https://www.hobbypcb.com/index.php/products/hf-radio/hardrock-500-power-amplifier-support-package
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
1525
K5RHD Rating: 2022-12-10
Great kit building experience Time Owned: 6 to 12 months.
I came here to write a review praising Jim's kit. Turns out PE1HZG already summarized everything I wanted to say so I will not repeat all that but add a few things.

First, Jim will support you through the ENTIRE building process. He was patient and did not laugh audibly at my *dumb* questions.

I use the amp with my KX3 and IC-705 without issue. I also opted for the ATU even though I have a nearly resonant OCF dipole (75/80 is at 2.3:1 without the ATU). I also figured it would be worth it in case I ever put anything else up that needed an ATU.

I run the amp just fine on 120V. The amp barely breaks a sweat and keeps itself cool. The fans can get a little loud but I relocated it down on a shelf out of direct earshot.

Band decoding and CAT with the KX3 are flawless. The amp is always right there when I QSY to another band. The IC-705 Bluetooth adaptor works just as well controlling the 705.

I have a background in mobile electronics and know my way around a soldering gun. Building the HR500 took all of a weekend plus a day and I took breaks. YMMV, but the parts go together well, and none were missing when it arrived.

The added bonus for this relatively new ham is that I learned how an HF amp works along with all the parts and what they do. If you are the sort that likes to build things, this amp provides a great experience. I look forward to Jim's next products.

PE1HZG Rating: 2022-04-06
Great kit, highly recommended Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
This amplifier kit, consisting of the "support kit" and an actual amplifier, allows construction of an amplifier with an output of 500W that can be driven by a QRP rig, like Elecraft KX2/KX3, FT817 and various others.

It is a "big brother" of the Hardrock 50W kit that won prizes in an ARRL construction contest a few years back. Clearly, learnings have been implemented in this radio but looking at the HR50 manual the heritage is clear.
This kit has more power and a built-in power supply all in one box.

This really is a kit, there are a number of PCB's, all of them only have SMD's pre-installed, and you get to install wired components, wind coils and transformers (including high-power transformers), power transistors, the cooling system and the like.

For me I bought the kit to get experience building equipment like this: some others "kits" is just assembly of some pre-built, pre-aligned PCB, but in this case you'll actually spend time constructing it all. I definitely got my money's worth getting experience here and now look different at these amplifiers.

Kit building
The kit is fully complete, up to the last screw, and - important! - not a single screw was missing (if you want to understand the importance, try getting M3 screws if you're in an Imperial country or 6/32 screws if you're in a metric country like me). I did not have to ask for anything, everything was in the kit, well-packaged and surviving international shipping (Congrats Curtis!)

The instructions are pretty detailed and require you to read. I made two errors, both fully to be blamed on me trying to rush it and not reading carefully. The website has the build instructions - see yourself.

I built this piece by piece, feeling a bit nervous about putting things together (if you're passing 58 Volts @ 20 Amps though some semiconductors, you should) but it all worked in the end. Note that the final transistors are well protected - run them out of spec and the amplifier immediately goes offline and shows you the error of your ways (there is a warning level you need to pass first).

I really enjoyed constructing this and any question I had was promptly answered by Jim - support is as good as advertised.

Use
So far, I have not used an antenna yet - I am more a constructor than a talker so I've only done measurements on the thing, which are pretty good BTW.
The amplifier has a number of useful features. It has a built-in PSU that can also supply 13.2V @ 2A for a driver transceiver (Elecraft, FT817 or some SDR radio).
So, you don't need to carry a PSU for that, the kit supports powering the radio all integrated in.

It has interface support for a number of radios (doing automatic bank switching), if that can't be used the band needs to be set manually and there is the standard "key to ground" PTT switching.

There are fans but they are barely audible. Drive the amplifier, heating things up and the fan speed increases. I have not gone over 59 degrees yet.

The unit has two color touch screen displays.
One shows the working parameters of the amplifier: output power, reflected power, driver power, volts and amps of the amplifier, temperature in centigrade or fahrenheit, output SWR.
The other display shows the band used, TX/RX, PTT/Standby, antenna output selection (2 ports) and parameters of the optional antenna tuner. The antenna tuner tunes in low-power (just using the driver rig), if the SWR is OK the display shows and the next PTT will have the amplifier online.

The kit does 160m-10m, *not* 6m. Decisions had to be made for price and portability. It has CB-band protection as required by USA regulations.

There are a number of ways to interface the thing. There is a serial interface (TTL serial), a USB port that provides another serial port to talk to the amp, and the usual PTT-to-ground. It is possible to integrate the radio in a number of ways, I suggest you look at the manual for that. The serial ports allow remote operation for those interested.

The amp gives great tinker possibilities, if you want you can make changes to the software yourself.

This isn't "just an application note in a box", it comes with proper filtering, which I tested before integrating the amplifier in the box.

All in all I am pretty happy with the kit and frankly a bit surprised that I am doing the first review. Five stars!