Yaesu: FT-450D lower power amperage?

[Awesomeman92]

Apologies if there's a thread for it already, but searching the internet hasn't really produced any results. I'm an HF newbie (just passed the general last week and it got into the FCC database on Friday), so I haven't really had time to experiment with different HF equipment yet.

Does anyone have any ballpark figures for how much power a FT-450D will generally use running below 100w? I picked one up that'll be here this upcoming week and would like to use my current power supply (10A continuous/12A peak) with it until I have the money for a bigger supply in a week or two. My current supply runs a HTX-100 10 meter radio just fine at both 5 and 25 watts, would it be fair to assume the same numbers on SSB? I know the spec is 22 amps at 100w, but again, I won't be running anywhere near that until I get the bigger supply. Most of what I do is talk local on 10 which I can easily do at 5w, and if I could work some of the lower bands at 25w or so that would be a nice bonus. I'd be using SSB exclusively. Thanks in advance!

 

[prcguy]

You should get some reasonable power with a 12A peak supply, possibly 50W or more. SSB is not continuous duty and average current demands depend on how dense the RF envelope is from mic gain and compression settings. If you try to operate FM mode you will have problems somewhere above 20W due to the continuous duty cycle of FM.

My favorite travel power supply is a small 18A Astron switcher and it runs cold when operating at 100W for long periods of time. My average current with most radios seems to be less than 15A at 100W output.
prcguy

Apologies if there's a thread for it already, but searching the internet hasn't really produced any results. I'm an HF newbie (just passed the general last week and it got into the FCC database on Friday), so I haven't really had time to experiment with different HF equipment yet.

Does anyone have any ballpark figures for how much power a FT-450D will generally use running below 100w? I picked one up that'll be here this upcoming week and would like to use my current power supply (10A continuous/12A peak) with it until I have the money for a bigger supply in a week or two. My current supply runs a HTX-100 10 meter radio just fine at both 5 and 25 watts, would it be fair to assume the same numbers on SSB? I know the spec is 22 amps at 100w, but again, I won't be running anywhere near that until I get the bigger supply. Most of what I do is talk local on 10 which I can easily do at 5w, and if I could work some of the lower bands at 25w or so that would be a nice bonus. I'd be using SSB exclusively. Thanks in advance!

 

[Awesomeman92]

You should get some reasonable power with a 12A peak supply, possibly 50W or more. SSB is not continuous duty and average current demands depend on how dense the RF envelope is from mic gain and compression settings. If you try to operate FM mode you will have problems somewhere above 20W due to the continuous duty cycle of FM.

My favorite travel power supply is a small 18A Astron switcher and it runs cold when operating at 100W for long periods of time. My average current with most radios seems to be less than 15A at 100W output.
prcguy

Thanks for the response, that's about what I was figuring. I don't know of any operational 10m repeaters around here and I don't have an antenna that'll work on 6 yet, which is why I'll just be using SSB. I think I'll probably stick to 25w or 30w just to be safe, but once I get the bigger supply I'll measure the draw in different modes and at different power levels and post the results. I can't imagine I'm the first or last that has or will have this question!