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Reviews For: Ameritron ALS-1300

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

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Review Summary For : Ameritron ALS-1300
Reviews: 63MSRP: 2,899
Description:
HF No tune Amplifier, 1200 watt solid state w/switching PS
Product is in production
More Info: http://www.ameritron.com/Product.php?productid=ALS-1300
# last 180 days Avg. Rating last 180 days Total reviews Avg. overall rating
00634.1
N5OU Rating: 2009-11-06
Great, But! Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I have owned SN#30 for about a week now and have used it on 160, 80, 40 and 20 in both SSB and CW. When I first pulled it out of the box (purchased new from RandL) I was impressed by both the packing and the craftsmanship. I own and use several ameritron amps, AL-1500, AL-82, AL-500m and ALS600 so I knew what to expect. I did not remove the cover, rather simply followed the installation instructions. I use a FT-2000 and an ICOM 756PROIII, next inline is the amplifier, followed by a powermaster SWR meter into a Palstar Auto-Tuner, then out to a full wave horizontal loop fed with 450 ladder line. My swr seen by both my radio and Powermaster is 1:1. Since the powermaster is after the amplifier, it should accurately indicate
forward and reflected power. I keyed up a CW tone on 3.825 with 20 watts input to the amplifier and it kicked off giving me a high swr fault. Reset standby switch and watched both the radio and powermaster meters for an indication of high swr and saw 1:1. Amp kicked off again, I reset and tried again this time watching reflected power on the ampifier itself and saw a large and inconsistent deflection. Amplifier indicated almost 200watts of reflected power? I then inserted my alpha SWR meter in the same location as the powermaster and measured exactly what the powermast had previously. Ok, so the amplifier is seeing something that no other peice of equipment is. HMM, open up a ticket with Ameritron detailing my experiances and test and within a couple of days got a completley irrelevent response of "When the amplfier detects 200 watts of relfected power it goes to standby". Right! that is what I wanted and that is what I paid $2499 for. However, the reflected power the amplifier is seeing simply does not exist! I then put my radio-craft SWR meter (this is 3 labratory grade swr meters) in place of the Alpha and again measured a perfect 1:1 using my AL-1500 at 1500 watts out into a dummy load. I then switched back to the ALS-1300 transmitting into a palstar 1:1 dummy load and it kicked off with and about 190 watts of reflected power and an swr of 1:6 on the ALS-1300 swr meter.
This only occurs when the first Dit or Dash is sent from my paddle. SSB voice is fine.
Now on to SSB voice. 75 watts input from my FT-2000 provides 1096 watts ouput. I have not driven it past 75 in and have no plans to do so. Amplifier remains cool and quiet and does not look bad at all on my desktop. I will use my other amps for CW and allocate the 1300 to voice duties only. I remember my early days with a ALS-500 and 600 having the same issue and the fix was to bend the output contactor on the relay slightly so it closes just prior to the input relay. I fixed those so I suspect with some time I can fix this. Obviously I am ok with Ameritron equipment as I currently own about $10,000.00 worth of their amplifiers, but I cant in good faith give it a 5 and honestly, given the reply to my help ticket I am being generous with the 4. When you pay almost $2500 dollars for a piece of equipment, your expectations are that it will do at least what the boxtop advertises.
AD5X Rating: 2009-07-18
Solid-state amplifier Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
I've been using SN3 for about six weeks now. I'll have to admit - it is a nice amp. No processors or digital read-outs, but it is very easy to use and it puts out 1200 watts on most bands with no problem. I have been operating QSK with this amp as the internal relays are plenty fast enough. I've put a fairly detailed review of the ALS-1300 in the "Reviews" section of my website at www.ad5x.com.

Phil - AD5X
KE4WY Rating: 2009-05-26
Very pleased Time Owned: 0 to 3 months.
Well, I bought serial number #1 at Dayton at a very nice discount and we are really enjoying the Amplifier. It's an easy conservative 1200 watts out. I am using the ALC with my K3 and Icom radios to hold the power at 1200. Believe me this amp with put out more power; However the instructions recommend you run it at 1200 watts
for proper linearity.

No problems hooking it up. It came wired for 230 volts and even had a plug on the end. I was ready to operate in a matter of minutes.

Since I have an AL-80BQ with factory QSK that has operated flawlessly & quietly I anticipated the purchase of this amplifier and obtained an outboard QSK-5 hooking it up to this amp and it is also very quiet, no relay sound just like my AL-80BQ.

On CW, with the QSK-5, I can still run full break-in CW, and hear other stations between my own dits plus when operating SSB no relay sound is heard due to the Pin diode switching from the QSK-5.

So far I am very pleased with my purchase.