Excuse me, sir, but most of us who design moderate power solid state
transmitters wouldn't THINK of a circuit that didn't have full VSWR
protection, either by overdesign of the output devices or a VSWR loop to
shut the finals down in the event of a situation that you describe.

And no, they don't run hotter. The normal failure mode is secondary
breakdown due to voltage spikes in the output matching circuitry.

And, given a random length of coax between the transmitter and the open
circuit, all you can guarantee is that you will be on the outer ring of the
Smith chart somewhere between an open and a short ... a pure open is a very
low probability.

Jim




Transmitting at full power into an open circuit - which is what you'd get
after burning up the attenuator - is about the worst thing you can do to a
final, especially a transistor one. Solid state finals are less forgiving
than tube finals, and abuse that would just make the tubes run hotter than
normal will burn up transistors quickly.