Richard,
You are exactly right, and I want to emphasize something that your
post doesn't really mention: if you are subtracting dbs from the
received station's signals to estimate your signal strength to that
station: _Your antenna gain does NOT matter_. The gains (or losses)
of both station's antennas are system gains, not station gains.
You do not need to feel embarrassed about the fact that he is running
a 5 element cubical quad, and your MP-1 is sitting on park bench.
Your weak signals are going to be enhanced by his antenna just as much
as his strong signals are.
So if you have managed to tune up a damp shoestring, and you are
hearing a kilowatt station at S9+40, give him a call -- unless he has
absurdly high noise levels at his station he will hear you.
When running QRP, just assume the worst and subtract 4 S-units from
the other OM's signal. If that is still an S-unit above the noise
level, give a call. Be prepared to say "That is correct. That is
correct. 5 watts. 5 watts." The other op won't believe it, and
assume QSB is messing with his copy. And if my experience is
representative, they will insist on dropping their own power to 5
watts -- with vocalized doubtfulness.
You will not make a lot of QSOs this way, but if you like listening as
much as talking, you'll have fun looking for those "sweet spot"
contacts. So, unless you are trying to work a net or a schedule, 5
watts SSB works great.
A low power window on 20m would make this even better: it would let a
QRPer know that "if I can hear'em, I can work'em". An interesting
variant (uh oh... here come the flames...) would be operating LSB in
that window, since it's the top of the band.
In fact, I'm tempted to propose 14350 LSB as an ad hoc QRP calling
frequency.
Let the old timers unleash their fury on me.... now.
--
Brian N0KZ
Stop, drop, roll.
--- In FT817@y..., "Richard B Drake" <rich@w...> wrote:
Any cook, knows that when you read the list of ingredients on a
package, the
largest quantity ingredient is listed first and as you read down the
list
the quantities get smaller and smaller. The list of ingredients for
a
successful contact would read something like this:
1) Propagation.
2) Local Noise Level
3) Antenna
4) Power
Note that Power is listed last and is of least importance. The
difference
between 5 watts and a Kilowatt is 23 db (10 Log 1000/5) or about 3.8
S
units.. How important that is depends wholly on other ingredients.
If you
see an S9+30 signal and he is running a KW the chances are pretty
good than
you can call him with 5 watts and hit him with an S9+5 signal. On
the other
hand if he is S4 with a KW chances are he won't hear your 5 watts.
Does it
really work that way? Most of the time it does - yes. Can you go on
20M SSB
with 5 watts and have fun - with the right propagation and antenna,
absolutely!!
------
73, Rich - W3ZJ
-----Original Message-----
From: whitehur@e... [mailto:whitehur@e...]
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2001 2:15 PM
To: FT817@y...
Subject: [FT817] Re: 20m Low Power Window 14340~14350 (Band Plan
Proposal)
--- In FT817@y..., "KQ6XA" <xtalradio@a...> wrote:
<snip>
>50Watts SSB has a similar communication capability as
> about 2Watts or 5Watts CW.
>
<snip>
Well then, if the goal is to communicate -- and I'm _really_ not
trying to revive the usual code v. no code war here -- use CW. CW
is
one of our tools, and this is what it's best suited for.
Cheers, Tom KC5UN
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