40 Watt Amplifier For FM Broadcast by MRF171A

This amplifier was built based on Marconi’s website, A Design for a 40W broadband VHF RF Power Amplifier for FM broadcast. A few minor tweaks were made to the schematic and a few parts were changed to what I had available (mostly surface mount components). The heatsink is from an old Motorola Mostar 800 MHz radio, and has the perfect heatsink island to match the MRF171A. Also used is a Progressive Concepts external LPF7002 low pass filter because it was also on hand. Since the MOSFET uses 28 VDC, I had to homebrew a 28 Volt / 5 Amp power supply using the schematic found in the ARRL handbook.

Tune up went exactly as stated in the how-to, with the RF power output hitting 57 Watts when driven with a stock Broadcast Warehouse 1 Watt LCD PLL transmitter at 98 MHz. Liberal use of ferrite beads and feedthru capacitors are on all RF detector, fan control and SWR control circuits.

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