Amp gets barely warm with the optima mk3 driving it at 50-60 watts and stays cool at 8-12 watts SSB all day!! Even 20-25 watts it won't get warm.
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At 13.8vdc it does about 500 watts with my optima mk3 and about 300 or so watts with the uniden 980. I can get more, I've seen it do 750 watts on a radio shack meter on SSB, but the voltage was a bit high at the time at like 15vdc. I own an older TNT 600hd with Toshiba 2879's, red dot type, some say they aren't as good as the pre red dots, but with 40-60 watts of drive into the amp I see right at 4-500 watts. This keeps the radio cooler and pretty well any amp I own happy as far as input is concerned. On SSB I have turned power back to about 8-10 watts pep. I have my DK set to 2 watts and pep is about 6 watts. I have the same amp and it does good with the uniden 980. On SSB 12 watts is all that is needed for that palmomar 250. You may have blown something in the amp that you're using already or will eventually unless you have the power on the radio turned back to like 1-2 watt DK and 8-10 watts pep on AM.
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That radio is plenty to drive a 4 transistor amp and not be over driven.
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If you can find a used one that works well that would work as well. You can turn rf power back to get the desired AM carrier and SSB power maybe, but I would replace that amp with a TS500 or a TNT 600HD, the TNT 600HD being my choice first. If not mistaken your 99v2 is a dual final radio, pep wattage of 45 watts or more depending on who timed it. The palomar 250 needs a radio like a uniden 980 to be used as it doesn't require much power. Okay the radio you have is way too much for the amp.