--- scott wilson s.wilson@yahoo.com wrote:
Hamtronics and they are still in business and do offer a wide range of inexpensive preamps. See http://www.hamtronics.com/lnk.htm.
I have a couple of concerns about those preamps. They are probably fine for portable/HT operation, but they may not be up to a permanent base station application. The first concern would be with weather. If you look at the SSB preamps, you'll see that they are enclosed in a weatherproof case with the connectors facing downward, and are inside of an RF sheilded case inside of that.
Second would be the power handling capabilities.
In fact, they have no power handling capabilities, as they don't have a relay. For me, this ruled out both DEM and Hamtronics, as I decided that I simply didn't want to have to put a relay assembly together that would reliably deal with 100 watts at 432. Buying one would have been out of the question, unless I got lucky on ebay. The end result would have been more versatile, but probably not less expensive.
Bob