The ham thing was a joke, and I meant no disrespect to truck drivers.
It just sucks when literally all of my locals run a 2x2879 or bigger, at first I was hoping mosfet conversion would do it, then I tried swing kit, nothing helped.
I'm just a strong believer that if you're going to be running an amplifier you need to drive it correctly, without outrageous swing #'s but rather a correct and pure 1:4 ratio.
And to be brutally honest with you, part of me contemplated buying an amplifier years ago, I was disheartened when I realized that my swing kit cobra would not be driving an amplifier correctly, that's my beef with low drive amplifiers and Cobras w/swingkits, if an amplifier can handle 4 watt carrier and 16 p.e.p. input (w/headroom to spare), and the radio is dead nuts on 100% modulation, that is a proper loud distortion free setup. (I.M.H.O.)
Somebody once bought an RM Italy amplifier that liked to see 0.5-1 watt of input drive, so he set his variable power on the Cobra way down low (1 watt) & "let her rip", 1-30 p.e.p. he couldn't understand how he was putting too much input in the amp & over driving it.
Simply put those peak #'s of the radio were so high and unatural (extreme modulation/swingkit), there was nothing else left to happen but for the radio to overdrive that amplifier and push the transistors into saturation, then eventually.... pop!
{Not to mention the G*d aweful 'harmonic trash' the over-drive will produce }
With a radio that has (while having reduced output) a proper modulation %, the poor little amp would have seen only 2-4 watts p.e.p., but his radio was not natural nor was it "de-tuned" in the proper manner, hence the possibility for a huge swing & over-drive. Just because he started with a "low dead key", does not mean the radio was suitable for his low drive amplifier!
I think a lot of people can form this misconception just by reading/seeing what they find on the net, not really putting the entire picture together.
While it is true that you can put an export [that's swinging from 1 watt to 40 pep] into a class c amplifier and see big output numbers, most of the time those videos are shown to demonstrate big numbers & not a clean signal. Honestly I don't hold people who run equipment like that (daily) in high regard. I hope people do not over-drive gear on the daily, it won't last long i.m.o. if they do anyways.
In my opinion it's just wrong,hmm maybe I could find some scientific document to prove that "swing kit" is not a part of "real A.M." There are proper ways to detune a radio for a low drive amplifier, using a Cobra 29/25. It could even be done with a tip120 mod but the rest of the setup is extensive and you must have an oscilloscope.
The huge modulation percentages are appealing to certain people, usually whom have the amplifiers that are biased "Class-C", because you wouldn't (I wouldn't) want to run a "garbage signal" (neg peaks crashing) into an AB amplifier, that would just be wasted current.
I guess how ever you excite an amplifier, as long as it has headroom to breathe and is not pushed "ball to the wall" it would work, but I wonder if people ever bothered to stop and ask why they want "swing" or if they even should want it.
Unless you are simply describing the max "forward" p.e.p. output in reference to the carrier power as a "swing", then I personally believe the term is being misused.
Often times "swing" is used to describe a "super modulation" modification, this helps to add further confusion when people form their own conclusions from the internet alone.
Thanks to the internet, today we have a mythical creature called "SWING", it is subjective and thus open to interpretation.
Just some of my thoughts, experiences, and opinions.
Let me "swing from 1:4" & I'll show you a
relatively clean signal.
-LeapFrog
