[Elecraft] K2: Vivat Rex

[Ron D'Eau Claire]

John, WA6L, wrote: 

"... I have had many, many contacts with other QRP stations.  This
has been in contests sponsored by the NAQCC, ARCI, and other QRP
organizations.  Who is "doing all the work" when two QRP stations contact
each other over a long distance?

I have had some QRP contacts where the other station has shown incredible
patience and skill in pulling my signal out of the mud, and I am very
grateful for those excellent operators.  However, that is not the norm."

------------------------

I've had some occasions when the other signal showed true skill in pulling a
very miniscule signal from me out of the mud, much to my surprise, when I
was running several hundred watts into a gain antenna! 

QRP produces weak signals more often than QRO given similar antennas. What's
interesting about it is how often a QRP power levels produce very nice
"armchair copy" signals over huge distances. 

Frankly, I find one of the biggest uses for higher power is to avoid some
fellow with a deaf receiver from jumping on my frequency in the middle of a
QSO. 

It would be genuinely interesting to have some Ham band slices where the
maximum power allowed at any time was 5 watts (or how about 1 watt?), even
during contests.

...jus' dreaming here.

For those unfamiliar with QRP DX, the NCDXF/IARU beacons* on 14, 18, 21, 24
and 28 MHz can be a real eye-opener. Often they are solid copy all the way
down to 100 milliwatts half way around the world. 

Ron AC7AC 

* http://www.ncdxf.org/Beacon/BeaconSchedule.html