Over the moon, propagation with my Sirio Tornado and a few mistakes along the way plus advice on burners?

So its been a little experimental with antenna choice since returning to CB'ing due to the Coronavirus.
Radio is a 6900.
First thing to go was the cheap PSU. Shockingly bad cheap effort off ebay. Straight in the bin and replaced with a decent 30 Amp PSU. Now happy with power supply.

Started with a 30 quid 1/2 wave rod. Not bad for 30 quid but bent in the first bit of wind (I live in a wind trap at the bottom of a valley).
Initially replaced with a Solarcom A99. Took it out of the box assembled, it but wasn't happy with the weight and potential wind loading so parked it in the garage (if anyone in Cheshire wants one, please get in touch)
Then did my research properly, and not a few Stellas and ended up selecting, a Sirio Tornaado 5/8ths wavelength to go on the gable end of my bungalow.
Have to say I love this antenna. Distance improved dramatically, noise slight reduced and over the weekend this has been subject to some serious wind without any bending. It does look a bit dramatic under wind load but even when putting it together I could respect the quality of this bit of kit.

So radio is ok, antenna is OK, power supply is OK, But feel I am just missing 2 things:
Firstly a little more power. Have my thoughts on 100W output on FM so thinking about a Zetagi.
So really would welcome your thoughts on the best 100W+ burner at a reasonable price. Do not want to get it wrong this time and have to replace

Thanks in advance

and the second thing was..... my 6900 has a morse key socket on the back. Way back when I was a boy soldier, I learned morse in the army and even though I haven used it in 38 years I still find myself buzzing along to it when I hear a pattern of dots and dashes.
Not heard any morse across the frequencies of my 6900 so is it a totally dead discipline or are there a hard core of operators out there?
And does anyone know of a morse key that will plug into the back of the 6900. Ideally not a paddle key unless that is all that is available
Thanks in advance

I use one of these (prices range from about £45 - £75 depending on where you buy it). With an input of 10 watts or less you will get about 100 watts output on FM / SSB. It requires a 12 volt power input (I use a Tracer lithium battery to power mine).

https://www.moonraker.eu/rm-kl-203p-all-mode-20-30mhz-100w-linear-amplifier-with-pre-amp

Thanks Pagan
50 bucks looks like a good price so happy with that

On my previous venture into the world of radio and DXing, I tried a few linear amplifiers (burners) including a !00w (200SSB)home base valve-driven job by Zetagi, a mobile 300w AM/FM - 600w SSB mobile unit I used to run from a truck battery to give it all the amps it needed to drive it and one of my friends had a kilo-watt amp with a whole row of valves to drive it.

I can't deny having a little more power may get you heard above others but in all honesty, I found my best DXing was done with the standard 25w or so my Uniden 28-30 put out on SSB and making the effort to ensure each part of the station was set to perfection, a good quality speech processor mic, a 4 element Yagi and good quality coax did more than any amp could ever do and when the skip was coming in the extra power was only an S point or two on the meter.

I would go with a quality brand like Zetagi or similar as opposed to unbranded, well worth looking at the second-hand market too and be cautious not to overdrive it with your higher-powered export radio.

Thanks for your comments Alan, much appreciated.

Can I ask a follow up question... I have a decent 30 Amp PSU so if the radio is cranked down to <10 W output, is there any reason why I can't run the radio and the burner off the PSU? Amp draw appears way below the 30A capacity but is there something I am missing ?

Nothing at all. Even without winding things down as long as both combined don't exceed 30A when you key up you can just run them both off the same PSU.

Sirio Tornado comes with four decent sized RF ground planes to give a fairly decent RF ground that'll help reduce noise.

27.500 is where you are most likely to hear CW, I wouldn't say it's busy but I certainly wouldn't say CW is dead either.

Thanks for the responses guys, much appreciated. i shall spend some time on 27.5

You could always have a wig on the 10 metre band CW and beacon sub bands

I'm just starting to learn CW, as 2 months ago i learned to use a 3D printer. At the site yeggi.com you can find different designs of morse keys. I printed this one:

Hi Sean,

I run a 6900 and a kl200p off a 20/30 amp psu,,,,    at 5 watts out put the rig pull 4 amps at 20watts it draws 4 amps,,,  with the kl on am and driving with 5 watts it draws 8 amps total  on side band driven with 10 watts it draws 12 amps,,,,,,, youll have power to spare.

70thirds Tom