[Elecraft] just 500W ?

[Hector Padron]

Yeah,yeah,yeah, I know all about qrp,I started in hamradio when I was 13 years old,I am 62 now,you figure how long ago,my first QRP was a 6V6 tube oscilating with a xtal on 7005 and that thing made barely 2W and with a dipole I worked in less than a year more than 100 countries in CW from my CO land BUT those were years where the bands were not so crowded and they were not so noisy and the solar cycles were great BUT today with the hundred thousand stations filling the bands,the high band noise,the terrible propagation,QRP working is not the same,besides the courtesy of those old times its gone forever,bands are plagued by guys using full legal power OR MORE who has no respect for anybody and the actual rules is have power or not make a contact,most of the times unless you have a great beam antenna on 40M you won't do much with a QRP,you need to have those 500W from your amp or more.Its tough today to survive in the bands jungle sorrounded by lions who
 want to smash your poor signal and you only have a razor blade to defend yourself.
"Life is too short for QRP ! "
 
 
AD4C

"If freedom means something,it is the right to tell others what they don't want to hear" –George Orwell

--- On Tue, 1/25/11, Wayne Burdick <n6kr at elecraft.com> wrote:


From: Wayne Burdick <n6kr at elecraft.com>
Subject: Re: just 500W ?
To: "Hector Padron" <ad4c2008 at yahoo.com>
Cc: elecraft at mailman.qth.net
Date: Tuesday, January 25, 2011, 8:10 PM


> The shirt I wear sometimes in the hamfests says up front : "Life is too short for QRP"

In stark contrast, the first "rig" I built, when I was 13, was a 200-milliwatt-output crystal oscillator that used half a dozen parts with their leads twisted together. No PCB, no solder, no box. It was ugly. But it worked.

I connected a hand key and a battery in series, paid out a roll of guy wire and tossed it on the roof, then started listening around the rig's 40-m frequency with my Hallicrafters SX101. A guy up in Los Angeles was calling CQ, and when he came back to me, I nearly fell off my chair. 200 miles on 200 mW, with an unmatched wire laying on the roof and a 9-V battery!

A few months later someone gave me an HT37 transmitter (100 W). First thing I did was turn the drive down to nearly zero, measured my output at 200 mW, and worked New York (2500 miles) on 20 m.

Life's not too short for *that* :)

OTOH, I'm quite proud of our engineering staff's achievement with the KPA500.

Wayne
N6KR