Electronic – Confusion in the difference between DC current gain and AC current gain in common emitter amplifier

One reason is that the transistor gain is degraded at high frequencies. To pick a specific example, the ON semiconductor BC546 has a gain-bandwidth product (GBP) of 100MHz at 1mA collector current (see figure 6 in the linked datasheet). This means that at a frequency of 27MHz, the current gain (beta) is about 100MHz/27MHz = 3.7, not 100.

At 27MHz, stray capacitances in the transistor (amplified by the Miller effect) may well also be playing a role in reducing the gain.

Simply replacing the transistor with one more suited to high frequencies may be sufficient to fix the problem. You may get away with just choosing a different general-purpose transistor: the 2N3904, for example, is a little better with a typical GBP of 300MHz. A better solution is probably to choose one of the many transistors designed for high frequency applications. To pick one at random, the PN5179 from Fairchild has a typical GBP of 2000MHz.

Because of the Miller effect, the common collector amplifier is not especially well suited for high frequency amplification, and topologies such as the common base amplifier are often used for signals at several tens or hundreds of MHz. However, at 27MHz I suspect you will be OK with a common emitter amplifier.

An additional factor limiting the gain is that the impedance of C4 || R6 needs to be added to r_e when calculating the emitter resistance at signal frequencies. Usually C4 is chosen to have negligible impedance at signal frequencies compared to the r_e of the transistor, but at 27MHz the impedance of your R6 || C4 is about 55Ω (dominated by the 59Ω impedance of C4). Switching C4 to a 1nF or 10nF capacitor should increase the gain by more than a factor of two.

Over a substantial range of Ib (corresponding to V2=1.5 to 10V or Ib around 0.1 to 1.0 mA) you show that hFE for this transistor model varies only between 180 and 205. That is close enough to constant for many applications, especially in the context of all the other conditions that cause hFE to vary.

So some introductory texts may simplify their treatment of a transistor by pretending it is actually constant, in order to teach other things (aka small-signal analysis). A good text will return to this issue later on and explore the actual behaviour in more depth.

The linked article (from comments above) makes this statement without any such qualification. However it is on a webpage which also contains this utter howler. In my estimation, such a page is actually worth LESS than you paid to read it!