[Elecraft] Johnson Rangers

[W B Reese]

You are so correct about your QRP comparison of the Johnson Ranger to the 
K2.  There are a few minor points I'd like to make.

I had 3 Rangers during the course of my ham career, a Ranger I, which I 
liked so well that I purchased a Ranger II & built it from a kit, and later 
(about 25 years) a period when I was down on my luck with no money & got on 
the air by borrowing a friend's Ranger (N6CX).  On no occasion did I ever 
get more than 32 watts output.  Yes, the manual says you can run 65 watts 
input on fone, but there is a peak coupling point beyond which the power 
output actually drops.  If you're running 65 watts input, you're actually 
getting about 27 watts output.  To get the max you have to run about 50 
watts input - something I wasn't smart enough to do in those days.

On the other hand, the PEP of an AM transmitter is 4 times the 
carrier.  The power in the sidebands is 1/3 as you correctly stated.

If we take (for easy numbers) a power of 30 watts, it means we have a power 
of 10 watts in our side bands, or 5 Watts USB & 5 Watts LSB.  Also, our PEP 
is 30 X 4 = 120 Watts, of which we have 40 watts of PEP sideband power, or 
20 Watts PEP in each side band.  The "Real" Power of the Johnson ranger is 
therefore, 10 watts average with a 20 watt PEP limit.

In actual practice though, and I'm sure you'll remember, these figures are 
for sinusoidal tones.  In the real world, we would get about 30% modulation 
on the meter before splattering the carrier, so divide by 3 to get the 
"Talk-Power."

The "Talk-Power" of the Johnson Ranger was about 3 Watts Upper/Lower 
sideband.  A K2 is just about the same.  If you use compression, a little 
more, but probably not more than 3 dB.

Harkening back to the days of yore, it is amazing how much we were able to 
work, but if your memory is good, you will recall how much we were NOT able 
to work.  Your message mentions this fact when recalling how fast the 
fellows get their DXCC these days.  There are a lot of paths that need more 
than 3 watts & we were all constantly aware of the difference when a gallon 
transmitter came on the air.

Very 73,

TR@radions.net
WB6TMY CFO #1000
K2 S/N 0838


__________________________

  E-Mail: - - - - - - - @radions.net

  On the Web: - www.radions.net