KL 203-P CB 30Mhz Linear Amplifier 3D model

KL 203-P CB 30Mhz Linear Amplifier

About:The KL203 has been one of those amplifiers I recommend to people again and again over the years. They are inexpensive, they put out a solid 100 watts, which is more than enough for most DX, and as long as you don’t overdrive them they can last for quite a while.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with this amplifier, it’s a small amplifier (sub-compact would be the way to describe it) capable of around 100 watts on AM and 140-160 watts on SSB. Claims for actual output will vary from person to person but the numbers above are a fairly safe bet. I’d actually suggest that for best operation keep your output of the amplifier around 100 watts and it should last you a good long time.

If you are setting up one of these for the first time I’d recommend a carrier of around 20 watts out of the amplifier. Usually a 1 watt carrier input to the amp will give you 20-30 watt carrier out of the amp. If your radio swings to 15 watts with modulation the amplifier should show output of around 100+ watts. If overdriven with 4-5 watts these amplifiers will give your audio a scratchy or muffled sound, but with low input and a little swing they can sound very nice and clean.

The amplifiers have an ON/OFF switch in the middle, a Pre-Amp ON/OFF switch on the left, and SSB delay switch on the right. The amplifier ON/OFF and Pre-Amp ON/OFF work independently. What does this mean? It means you can run one or the other or both.

The Pre-Amp actually works quite well but like all pre-amps it will also amplify background noise so you may hear the station in the distance louder but you’ll also hear the static louder.

The SSB delay is a switch you’ll use when running in SSB mode (upper or lower sideband). The switch engages a delay because unlike AM transmissions in SSB you don’t transmit a carrier and so when you have lulls in your speech an amplifier without a delay would unkey. The addition of the SSB delay means that in-between words your amplifier relay won’t disengage or “chatter”. I actually found the delay to be a little shorter than I usually like and in some cases with longer pauses I did notice it un-keying and re-keying, but for the most part it works well.

Frequency: 20-30 MHzSupply: 12-14 VccInput energy/power: 10 AInput power: 0.5-10 WInput power SSB: 1-20 WOutput power: 100 W MaxOutput power SSB: 200 W pep MaxMode: AM-FM-SSB-CWFuse: 12 ASize: 109x125x35 mmWeight: 325 gr.