I was told the RCI 2950 it is used with has been modified with two cables coming out of the back of the radio that plug into the XL 450. There are two jacks on the rear of the amp that were unfamiliar. From my description it was determined that someone has copied an old unit.
I made a phone call to double check if these were produced under license from Palomar and was told they had no connection to the units in any way. The oversize low profile heatsink is the same as well. The four stage power selector switch is also the same configuration of the original. The layout is the same as the amplifier built back in the 80s. The unit has the original negative feedback and lowpass filter circuits. This unit has 4 of these devices and is Class AB1 biased. This Cobra is a duplicate of the Magnum but with Motorola MRF 454 transistors, which are a true sideband device. And sellers appreciated having a name that commanded top dollar. In a black market, beggars can't be choosers, so many buyer went along and hoped they got the real McCoy. Many of these units created a mess on the air with all types of harmonics and distortion. They didn't incorporate the filtering and regulated biasing or even the logical layout of the originals. These counterfeit units were of inferior quality and design. Few people new the way to identify a counterfeit, was by the Palomar name still being displayed on it.
They started to use the Magnum name alone as this was recognizable as their top of the line band. They didn't want to be dragged though court and defend the production of these amplifiers, even though they sold them to countries were they were legal. Very few people new that long before the bust they had come to an agreement with Palomar Engineers to no longer use the name even though they were the original holders of the name. Before and after the bust many linear manufacturers used the Palomar name for their products because it was the most recognizable for it's quality and performance.
They managed to get off with a small fine, and they don't ever want to go through that ordeal again. The Palomar folks no longer use the Palomar name or produce linear amplifiers since they were busted many years ago. It is a copy of the old Palomar Magnum linear amplifier. The heatsink and front panel layout looks very familiar. This is the other unit that my customer brought in for test.
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