Anyone own a RM Italy HLA-300V plus?

[jdobbs2001]

got my RM italy. Wow it is a nice looking piece of equipment. And quite heavy, lots of heatsink material, quiet fans.

only doing like 5 watts into it and it loafs at 200w pep AM.

Clean output. Looking at the spectrum analyzer. Tight nicely modulated AM signal.

Impressive unit.

 

[vkrules]

got my RM italy. Wow it is a nice looking piece of equipment. And quite heavy, lots of heatsink material, quiet fans.

only doing like 5 watts into it and it loafs at 200w pep AM.

Clean output. Looking at the spectrum analyzer. Tight nicely modulated AM signal.

Impressive unit.

Sweet JD whats it like on SSB with a bit more drive?

 

[jdobbs2001]

Sweet JD whats it like on SSB with a bit more drive?

It should do easy 400pep on SSB. I will be testing that today.

I am getting real good reports on the audio, very clear and clean. On my analyzer, I see it stay within 7.5khz no splatter on center of frequency and very clear no distorted AM audio.

It runs ICE cold even with extended rag chewing on AM.

It is over engineered for a 4 pill unit, definately looks like a high quality amp it has a new black face theme on the front that matches my icom.

When you turn it on it goes into a selftest routine.

This is a great amp for a QRP transceiver setup as well.

The 4 pills are Ma/Com brand MRF455s which those pills themselves cost like 43-45 dollars each.

Anyhow it was imported from the RmItaly dealer in italy so I got the factory fresh latest revision. from an ebay guy who sells a whole line of stuff for radio, it shipped quick.

 

[Tallman]

http://www.dnjradio.com//product_info.php?cPath=22_23&products_id=392

filters have absolutely NOTHING to do with splatter. I don't know where people get the idea that an output filter can clean up splatter..
The splatter comes because the transistors they use are too small for the power they try to run.

I don't know where that information comes from. But it is wrong. Splatter comes from a poorly operated radio system. Splatter comes from being over modulated with or with out a linear. Poorly modified radios with changes to limiting circuits are major culprits.
Filters will not fix bad operators or bad equipment.

If you read the chart in that review you linked you will see all of the 11 meter band is notch filtered out of the usable range.

 

[RatsoW8]

"Got Certified"??? What that mean?

It means the RM people are drinking way much red wine.

 

[James Mackinlay]

http://www.dnjradio.com//product_info.php?cPath=22_23&products_id=392


I don't know where that information comes from. But it is wrong. Splatter comes from a poorly operated radio system. Splatter comes from being over modulated with or with out a linear. Poorly modified radios with changes to limiting circuits are major culprits.
Filters will not fix bad operators or bad equipment.

If you read the chart in that review you linked you will see all of the 11 meter band is notch filtered out of the usable range.

I own one and use it on the ham bands it really isnt a bad amp at all for the money also mine is a new one and it does work on 11 meters I tested that for the hell of it when I got bored. I was a broadcast engineer for 30 years so I do know a little of something.

To start off with the amp will do about 350 watts really clean push it beyond that it starts to get dirty. The book says 15 watts in 300 out mine does about 270 with a voltage drop of about half a volt under load. In ssb mode drive it with about 25 watts and you should see about 400 out pep cant drive it much hard the protection circuit kicks in and shuts it down. Remember for every volt of voltage drop under load you lose on average 70 to 85 watts of output. Run it at 350 watts out and it will last years and run clean at the same time.

It is well constructed and runs pretty cool is it worth the money yes

 

[Onelasttime]

Why and the heck would you want a 100w carrier? That is just plain stupid to operate on CB with a 100 amp carrier. I take it you are looking at 300-400 watts pep with 100 watts carrier? Never mind most of those watt's are not going to be on freq.!!! Think 10-20 watts per device on am like 40 watts carrier running at sane levels and 80 watts running it to with in an inch of it's life carrier wise! If that design was perfectly efficient you would be looking at 65 watts per device but since it will be lucky to be 45% efficient that means a lot less than 65 watts per device on am! That assumes they are using Mot or Macom MRF455 stills. The company's sales material says 200w on AM and 400w on SSB.

In fact the very broad band design which means transformer coupled guarantee's you will not get much efficiency out of the amp. It is like the difference between a given light source focused into a laser like field which would be tuned input with out transformer coupling highly effective compared to that same light source being dispersed as a search light ie transformer coupling aka broad band. On top of that you are wanting to get more out of each device than the manufacture rates each device for! Did you do any homework or are we just looking at a meter?

If you watch the video you will notice he has about 30w of carrier on all the bands he is using it on!

It has 4 MRF455 not 4 2SC2879's in it!

http://www.rmitaly.us/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=143

 

[Onelasttime]

I own one and use it on the ham bands it really isnt a bad amp at all for the money also mine is a new one and it does work on 11 meters I tested that for the hell of it when I got bored. I was a broadcast engineer for 30 years so I do know a little of something.

To start off with the amp will do about 350 watts really clean push it beyond that it starts to get dirty. The book says 15 watts in 300 out mine does about 270 with a voltage drop of about half a volt under load. In ssb mode drive it with about 25 watts and you should see about 400 out pep cant drive it much hard the protection circuit kicks in and shuts it down. Remember for every volt of voltage drop under load you lose on average 70 to 85 watts of output. Run it at 350 watts out and it will last years and run clean at the same time.

It is well constructed and runs pretty cool is it worth the money yes

I call B.S. 4 MRF455 will not do 350 watts cleanly! Obviously your idea of clean and my idea of clean are light years apart. Your Andes Mt. Chain I mean rf output is going to have all of it's harmonics within 10-20db of the center freq. but it should be 40-70db lower than center freq. you are transmitting on. That 350 watts you are seeing is a summation of the actual signal you want and all of the harmonics all combined. So at least 150w of those 350w is smoke and mirrors and extreme wear and tear on the devices. For short duration pushing it to it's limits 200w is doable but 150-180 is a more realistic upper limit for safe and clean operation.

 

[bob85]

I don't own one but i have used & repaired a few 300's & 150's,
i have seen them with mrf455's sd1446's & ms1051's bit of a lottery what devices they use,
1051 are larger much higher rated transistors but they don't work so well in that circuit,
sd1446 is a vhf transistor with high gain on lower frequencies,

HLA300 is a 200w amp at best, anything more and it falls apart rapidly, read w8ji's review of its baby brother HLA150 for some truth on clean output,

They will do more output no problem & still sound ok especially if its got sd1446's but not cleanly,

they are a kl500 cb amp with filters & protection,
been a cb amp with extras they have cb amp feedback networks so gain rises significantly on lower frequencies,


they can oscillate on some frequencies with not very difficult loads.

 

[jdobbs2001]

I want to add that my RM Italy still works great since 2015 when I purchased it, I would say a solid product.

The vendor still sells them on ebay (Official reseller)

 

[jdobbs2001]

Running the amp outdoors with average south florida temp outside 80-82 degrees and it runs very cool. With an unmodified CB it will give you a solid 250 watts PEP and it seems to just loaf at such output not breaking a sweat at all. The fans stay silent, my power supply actually runs hotter.

You cannot go wrong with this amp, it will last a long long time.

 

[gcnengineer]

The only issue I have seen is the amps aren't properly greased to the heat sink. Although they claim you can drive the smaller amps with as much as 5 watts, everyone claims it will burn them out if you use more than 2 watts. If you use a high quality heat sink compound you can drive it with 2-3 watts and never worry about failure. If you're a light talker I suspect 4 watts would be an acceptable drive. The board is machine assembled, but the board is hand assembled into the case, this accounts for the poor heat sink connection. Think computer heat sinks, the CPU has a heat sink designed for a firm contact. The RM Italy amp is not, it takes care to achieve this.