Quote Originally Posted by kk4fpx View Post
I'm using a TM-281 Kenwood at low power ( 25 watts ) into a Mirage amp. I bought the amp at an auction for $45.00 mainly for the preamp to work birds with. My elevation is around 4000 feet above sea level and the humidity is high. I check into a simplex net on Sunday nights that's about 60 miles away, thought the amp might get thru better. I originally had a 5 watt ht on it but needed the ht for uhf.
Ah, understood. Can you lower the output of the Kenwood at all? If not, you might want to look into building an attenuator to decrease the drive into the amp. It would need some hefty resistors, but very doable. A lot of AM radio stations with older transmitters that couldn't do very low power, use resistors to burn off extra power as heat, to decrease the power to the antenna to meet licensed levels for lower nighttime power. Let me see if I can dig up some formulas for you on that, if you're interested.