I just ordered one of these amps to add to my new HF station. I had been running a FT-840 I bought in 2000, barefoot (about 85 watts) and a 88’ doublet only about 20’ up since I live in a HOA now. I recently purchased a FT DX-10 , with a new Alinco 35 watt power supply, a LDG 600 watt autotuner and MD-70 desk mic. I live in a very compact residential neighborhood and plan to put up a second wire antenna, a 10-40 meter EFHW about 35 feet up. I looked at the FT DX-101MP 200 watt rig but it was too much radio, almost 3X as much as the DX-10. I just ordered the BLA-350 PLUS for $850 plus $42 shipping directly from RM Italy US. I did a lot of research on both tube and solid state amps. The tube amps are fine if you have a lot of workspace and good antenna but they are really bulky and often require rewiring. Solid state amps are horribly expensive per watt. The BLA-350 was reasonably priced and had favorable reviews. Beyond 500 watts, you get diminishing returns over 100 watts. For example, 300 watts over 100 gives you 4.77 dB, 500 watts just shy of 6 dB or 1 S unit, and 1500 watts 12 dB over 100 or 2 S units. I’m hoping with the new setup I’ll have a better chance of getting through pileups or having better luck getting a DX signal out. In addition, I’m concerned that anything over a small amp would cause RFI and complaints from my neighbors.
That was a nice straight to the point video. At some point if you are a Ham you either tried or brought something from MFJ, most things work fine and they fill a need.
RM italy are decent amplifiers. I run a kl503 on 10 meter & after bypassing the driver transistor & removing the -7db attenuatior it sounds nice now. It’s inline with my icom IC-718 with 40 pep of drive. It puts out 325 watts on 10 meter.
Hi John, thanks for the concise video. I am thinking about buying one of these to use with my IC-7300. Are you still as pleased with the amps performance as you were when you made the video?
I would not trust the MFJ wattmeter. Note that it was not on the same scale setting when operating with a carrier vs SSB. Two different scales were used. I will bet that on the high scale, with a carrier, it would not show exactly 300 watts output. Also, best meter accuracy is near full scale, not at ~30% scale.
Well, I actually calibrated the tuner and it is very close on both low and high scale readings. The reason its on high scale for SSB is because on low scale the meter would peg out.
