[Elecraft] cw 'clicking' ??

[Tom W8JI]

> I have a friend who is about 2 miles from me who when on 
> 2m SSB and CW
> is running about 250kw ERP from his moon bounce system.  I 
> don't hear
> him on either of my K3's until he gets within 5kHz of me 
> when I'm on
> SSB, and on CW he has to be within 1 KHz before I can tell 
> he is
> there.

I know we probably all realize this, but the field strength 
outside of the main lobe from a 250 kW ERP antenna would be 
a whole less than the field strength from a vertical running 
100 watts! I am, of course, NOT saying it is normal to have 
clicks like he is having.

He should not have that problem at that frequency separation 
and distance even if the beacon is running 1000 watts.

I'd be sure nothing in the receiver ahead of the roofing 
filters is going non-linear, but it almost certainly (unless 
someone has a very high gain preamp) going to be a 
transmitter problem.

Some of these beacon transmitters are scary, especially when 
people think they can run CW through a class C amplifier 
stage. A class C stage, even "unintentional" class C, can 
make clicks hundreds of kHz wide.

73 Tom