Posted: 3/11/2015 11:06:48 PM EDT
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I sold my Commander HF2500 and spent the money for a new Acom 1000. NO, I did not find one at a garage sale but bought it new from Array Solutions.
Brown truck showed up today with a box of happiness.  So far I'm very impressed. I opened it up to take a look. The amp comes with a GU-74B tube and the transformer already installed. Engineering design and built quality is exceptional. I've worked on many other amps, including Alphas. Acom beats them all in design and quality. All coils are wound on ceramic cores with silver coated wire. This includes a 160M coil unlike many other amps who use lossy iron core toroids. Parasitics chokes everywhere. It even has a low pass filter near the output connector.
This amp is smart. Everything is protected and it's hard to mess it up. TRI is a nice tuning aid which together with the automatic input attenuator, makes tuning very easy. No antenna tuner is required as long as SWR stays below 3:1. It's very quiet. No clunky relay. Full QSK with no clicking noises.
My dad already found a new GU74b Svetlana tube for me. It's a military production tube. It cost him $30. New tubes can be found on Ebay for about $150. Much better than two $900 (ea) tubes in the Commander. First contact was with Brazil with 59+20 report. 55W in = 1000W out. 65W in = 1200W out. It's going to be a long evening.
______________________________________ HV and control deck: 
__________________________________________________ RF Deck. It's double shielded. Built like a tank. 
______________________________________________________________________ Ceramic coils for the lower freq. bands. You can also see the vacuum relay on the right. 
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1000 Watts of happiness It will do 1200W with 65W input.
The picture was taken with my dumbsmartphone.The indicator is amber color. It's crisp and easy to read. 
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