Lots of radio and amp issues

If the preamp is overdriving your radio's front end, the radio may have some kind of built-in protection that reduces current to the front-end transistor. Preamps are noisy, so just leave it off unless you really need it to pull in a distant station.

 

1 get rid of the amp for now Take it out of line and put it to the side for now.

2 replace the coax with something Like 15 feet or more of new fresh coax and have the ends put on them by someone else.

3 get an external watt meter and check the wattage, don't depend on the internal meter.

4 when you have it setup right, with a good swr then put the amp back line with a new jumper and test out everything.

I've dealt with this before. I have a short -under 11 feet - piece of coax going to an antenna and it was a nightmare, so someone suggested I replace it with at least 15 feet of new stuff with good ends which fixed the problems.

 

No don't do that. get new coax, get a roll of coax seal (if you don't find any around you, order it on Amazon and put electrical tape over the connection) and put it together. It seems that it won't be a problem to get all of this fixed.

By the way Coax doesn't really go bad, other than the connections and a few inches from it if there is water seepage. If you set up the coax through the door and its pinched, then that's one area you need to look out for.

 

All of this stuff is under $30, from the coax to the connectors to the coax sealer.

 

You could have just been talking closer to the mic or something and sounded louder. If your signal didn't change, something is wrong with the amp I'm thinking.

 

It's nonlinear hence the change in audio. The radio and amp need to be looked at by a competent technician. There is no such thing as plug and play. It is more than likely that you are over driving the amplifier. Since it is a Class C amplifier most likely the waveform out of the transmitter needs to be reshaped so that the waveform out of the amplifier is proportional. Only a competent technician with the proper test equipment is capable of making those adjustments.