Ignore all the burned flux residue, thats just there because I managed to toast all the fets when I accidentally tried to drive a 100w amp with 100w. HAHAHA, dumb arse move i know but shit happens. The good thing is, blowing up $4 worth of parts does not smart like blowing up $200 worth of LdMos.
But as far as things go, being a proof of concept, I really could not have been more happier. 100w out on 40m dropping down to 50w out on 10m, with little to no thought going into the design, I am sure I can improve the higher frequencies with a bit more thought on the design, input matching and general layout.
And on the subject of layout, I have worked out a lot of things i can do to improve things, like rotating the fets 180 degrees and using flood fills for the output traces. I also need to add in Tx/Rx switching and the like to make it perfect.
As for its performance, it draws about 6A at 13.8V, even with the sub optimum heatsink that is passively cooled, after 30 minutes of 50% duty cycle, the case of the fets did not get beyond 65 Deg C. All in all, i am very pleased with the performance and now get to redesign it, add in the improvements and build it all together into a box with filters and call it a thing 🙂
Looks great, what fet’s are you using?
IRFZ24N I have some others here that the CBers use to make 4 pills that should also do 100w that should give higher output on 10m but they seem to go bang easier, the 24N’s are just bomb proof and rock solid.
Great work! I look forward to seeing more of this, especially seeing how the IRFZ24N works out.