Removing or cutting R249 merely disables the AMC. The diode goes somewhere else. I do not condone disabling the AMC or ALC circuits, because this is what causes 99% of the hash, trash, splash and bleedover in other people's receivers. The AMC responds to Negative going voltage swings. A properly set up NPC-RC on an Oscilloscope will allow you to reduce your carrier, and have higher positive peaks, up to the positive rail, before it flat-tops. The Negative going voltage swings will (should) never hit Zero volts, where the RF is cut off in between syllables. Some even go to the extent of "Box Cars" where the RF comes out in square wave pulses, which cause a lot of audio harmonics. By leaving R249 intact, this gives you some amount of automatic feedback adjustment to keep it from being overmodulated.