[Elecraft] DX on 15 watts

[stan levandowski]

Sam, I clearly see your point.  Perhaps I can volunteer some specifics 
from my own QRP station.  I live in a townhouse in NY state opposite a 
1500 foot mountain a half mile away and I'm about 200 feet MSL.  My 
antenna is an East/West 44' nonresonant doublet in my attic which  loads 
up on 80 through 6 through an SGC-237 autocoupler.  However, I presently 
choose to only work 40, 30, and 20.  I built and use all the Elecraft 
transceivers.  I generally use only 5 watts and I only operate CW. I am 
a QRP fanatic.  I've worked 83 countries on 5 watts or less and nearly 
all states with this antenna and my K2 and K3 within the last year. 
I'm a ragchewer, not a paper-chaser so these numbers do not represent 
any kind of concentrated effort.  My other antennas are equally 
non-awe-inspiring.  A 28 foot wire thrown into a tree, with a 33' 
counterpoise on the ground, regularly gets my K1 signal into Europe and 
South America from my back deck with 559 average reports.  A homemade 
magnetic loop sitting in my driveway and 900 milliwatts out of my KX1 
got to UA1CE in St. Petersburgh on two different occasions. That's 
better than 5000 miles per watt.

QRP is responsible for bringing me back into ham radio.  I left the 
hobby for many years after becoming rather bored with how easy it was to 
push the button, aim the tribander on the tower attached to the side of 
my house, toss my 180 watts into the ether and get a reply 99% of the 
time.

For me, QRP became one of those niche areas in ham radio referred to by 
another lister.  Every contact is a 'big deal' and when I reach for the 
power knob on my rig its usually to turn it *down* even further just to 
see how low I can go.  I've been milliwatting recently.  I also go CW 
mobile on 40, 30, and 20 with hamsticks.

In the end, it all comes down to the gods of propagation.  But even 
then, I've called CQ on a "dead band" more than once and received a 
surprising reply around 14.060.

Anyway, for what it's worth.....


73, Stan WB2LQF
KX1 #2411    K1#2994    K2# 6980    K3#5244     K9 #1 (Cocoa the 
Chihuahua)
Everything is QRP, even the dog.



On Mon, Aug 1, 2011 at 8:41 AM, Sam Morgan wrote:

> All these QRP/QRO contacts stories,
> are pretty meaningless to me,
> *UNLESS*
> they have antenna, band, and qth information included.
>