C'mon QRPers

[apopj]

Hello all, surely there are some QRP gang out there. Let's show the QRO ether burners that there is life without over energizing the airwaves. I just received my 1000 Miles per Watt award for a PSK contact with Paris, France from Ohio using a little less than one watt. This works out to about 3500 miles per watt. Let's see, if I had been running 100 watts, I could have worked myself, long path. Power, who needs it!!!!

[WX9T]

These days, I've been working (when conditions permit) with an Icom IC-731S...a 10w version of the 735...that I picked up over in Japan back in July. Mainly active on phone, and of course I'll often get clobbered by the QRO crowd if I get into any sort of traffic such as nets, DX pileups, etc. However, on the days when the bands are right, it's a great performer, especially given that it's got the same receiver section as the 735 which gives for excellent 'ears' with the vertical wire I'm using.

QRO has its place, I suppose...mainly when conditions are especially crummy, or if you have to punch through a horde of "legal-limit" types with typically lousy pileup op skillls. But it's just not quite as much on the finesse tip as keeping the output power down in the single digits. Might have to give this 731S a whirl on PSK31, also, or maybe some of the other digital modes such as Hell; with the newer computer software, it's certainly easy enough to do.

[apopj]

I think you will be pleasantly suprised at how well you can do with low power on PSK. Don't think it is quite as good as cw, but it is a lot of fun and the software is free (digipan). I have made hundreds of contacts using about 5 watts on 20/40 on psk and all have been fun. PSK has brought back the joy of hamming to a lot of us hams who had become jaded from the 1,2,3 SSB contacts with high power. And, once you see how you can do with PSK, there is always CW. I am in the process of getting one of the Elecraft KX1 units and going portable CW from a school bus. This would be while stopped at sporting events, of course.
So take care and have fun.... 72 / 73 Jeff WB8QYT

[WX9T]

CW's never done much for me, I'm afraid...I worked CW off and on in the late 1980s after getting my Tech Plus, and made some decent Qs on 15 and 40 with an older Multi-Elmac 'twins' rig with a double-zepp and Johnson Mini-matchbox. Always found the mode to be sort of tedious, I guess.

Instead, the mode I'm thinking about investigating is Hell...the old Hellschreiber mode with some new computer-based tweaks. Functionally, it works like very high-speed CW, but results in a visual readout, making it a 'fuzzy' mode which relies on the op to be able to interpret the resulting readout. People are saying it's the new 'comer', with weak-sig potentials along the lines of old-school CW, but the fun/ease of PSK31. Sounds like a QRP must-try...

[K5TEN]

QRP ROCKS!

There are soooo many opportunities to QRP that it's one of the most "oddball" ways to prove a point in our hobby...ya don't always need to have the amp on, and ya don't always need to be at 100w either.

You don't even have to be doing cw or digital modes either if that's not your bag.

I used to live 10 miles from a friend of mine. I was in Illinois and he was in Wisconsin. We both had beams and would point them at each other and see just how low we could go on any given night. He had a 5 element yagi at 70' and I had a 3 element yagi at 35'. Most of the time (on 10M SSB) we could get down to about 100 mW before we lost each other--and that's PEP not average power out.

One of the same Wisconsin friends would look for me during 10m openings after I moved to North Carolina. One time we were talking during an 10m SSB opening and he peaked to 25+ over and he said I was the same on his end so we played the "How low can you go" game and I got down to 100 mW and he a little lower. We're talking using the PEP mode and the 5 watt range---and the needle just barely wiggles. That was over a 700 mile path!

Hey, if you love CW (and I do) or the digital modes and somebody gives you a 599 +30 report, get on the 5 watt range on the wattmeter and crank the power down to a watt and ask "hw nw??" and see what happens. If you get a 539...keep going lower and see what happens!

If you are the kind of ham that loves ham radio and all the bands--but loves one band over the others, and concentrates on optimizing their station for that one band--then try QRP on your bread & butter band and see what happens.

If 10, 12, or 15 aren open, I'll go QRP on 20m. My favorite places to do it are 40m and 80m. I also get one heck of a bang for my 1 watt on 30m.

I don't go around trying to break any DXpedition pileups (unless I tail-end on SSB).


Good luck guys, and HAVE FUN whatever you decide to do...it's your $15 bucks not mine!


73


Bruce