[Elecraft] Cool QRP Field Day post

[Steve Hall]

My xyl KC4IYD is a qrp fan (yep she's a keeper) and sent me the 
following post from one of the qrp mailing lists she follows.  Neat 
elecraft plug..

73,
Steve - W8HF
K1 #1520

--- Michael Babineau <michael.babineau@sympatico.ca>
wrote:
Date:   Tue, 27 May 2003 23:04:22 -0400
> From: Michael Babineau
> <michael.babineau@sympatico.ca>
> To: "Low Power Amateur Radio Discussion"
> <qrp-l@Lehigh.EDU>
> Subject: A Tale of two Field Days
>
> I just finished reading the article in the latest
> QST called "Rocky
> Mountain Field
> Day".  For those of you that haven't seen it ... 3
> guys hike to the top
> of Mount Elbert, CO
> and operate Field Day QRP using a K2, what looks
> like a small gel cell,
> a G5RV supported
> by a DK9SQ mast and do pretty well.  Sounds like
> fun.
>
> A couple of weeks ago I had out the December 1998
> Issue of QST to look
> up Dave, K1SWL's article on the FREQ-Mite and I
> remembered reading an
> article in
> that issue that sounded very similar except that the
> three guys lugged
> 75lbs of batteries
> (3 33Ahr gell cells) an FT100 an ALPHA DELTA Outpost
> Tripod (15lbs) and
> an Outbacker
> Mobile antenna up Longs Peak in Colorado (elevation
> 12,700 ft) to
> operate FD QRO.
> My first thoughts on reading this were ... wow
> that's a lot of heavy
> batteries and given
>   the poor ground conductivity at the top of a
> mountain a short vertical
> wouldn't be my first
>   choice of antennas. I kept thinking that they
> would have been better
> off running QRP
>   with a decent wire antenna supported by a DK9SQ
> mast (weighing less
> than 3lbs).
>
> So this evening after reading the article in the
> June 2003 QST I
> decided out of
> curiosity to figure out how well each of these
> groups fared ...
> wondering if
> it was really worth it to have lugged all those
> batteries just to be
> able to operate
> QRO. I hesitated at posting something to this list
> as my intent is
> certainly not to
> ridicule the group with the 75lbs of batteries. Much
> to my surprise I
> discovered
> that the two groups are the actually the same
> people, so it looks like
> they had
> come to the same conclusion as I had.
>
> Here are the results for the two years gleaned from
> QST
>
> 2002  290 QSOs  5W  3,295 pts
>
> 1998 160 QSOs  <150W  888 pts
>
> Now I realize that there are a lot of different
> factors at play such as
> varying propagation between the two years, that make
> it difficult
> to do a comparison. But given that 2 out of the 3
> operators were
>   the same in both years and the location was very
> similar,
>   I think it is fairly reasonable to make the
> comparison.
>   The comparison is much more reasonable than if it
> had been
> two completely different groups of people operating
> from different parts
> of the country with different terrain and soil
> conductivity.
>
> I think that this demonstrates that a well thought
> out QRP setup can
> certainly do as well as QRO station under Field Day
> conditions.
>
> Michael VE3WMB