[Techman]

Ah yes, looking back he'd stated 5 watts, but had also taken voltage readings on the different modes. The Americans that some of us may remember down the bottom end of the old AM band with their 2 watt radios driven with maximum 'swing' into distortion for maximum volume driving into large amplifiers for maximum effect. It may sound like a strange thing to say, but with AM coming back into use, I've noticed that it's not as nice, or easy to listen to as I seemed to remember it being in the old days, due to all the 'noise' on the band (27Mhz) these days, and I wish some of them would just 'up' their audio so that I could stand a chance of hearing them at a distance. I happen to know that all the 'operators' that are now using AM local to me are using straight rig power - amplifiers don't work well on AM with standard carrier power. I was listening to a group on AM (mid band as they call it now) tonight (actually three of them are still talking on there now as I type this) and at least one of them was using a 6900 - there's a lot of them about. One of them a while ago switched a small amplifier on and they all wondered why his audio sounded clipped and distorted, they'd all forgotten the old days. Anyway, he soon switched it off again.

It's possible that Mike's radio has two separate faults, although we may all end up being surprised at the final outcome - so long as there is one. We're certainly all learning something about these particular radios.