We report on the energetic and beam quality performance of the second to the last main amplifier section HEPA I of the PEnELOPE laser project. A polarization coupled double-12-pass scheme to verify the full amplification capacity of the last two amplifiers HEPA I and II was used. The small signal gain for a narrow-band continuous wave laser was 900 and 527 for a broadband nanosecond pulse, demonstrating 12.6 J of output pulse energy. Those pulses, being spectrally wide enough to support equivale
