[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
If you spend one
tenth of that amount sprucing up your antenna system you will get more benefit.
If you already have a 'basic tribander' or similar on a 40-foot tower, the next
step up is to a 'serious' beam on a 70 foot tower. That will cost you more than
most amps, and in many cases is impossible because of neighbors, zoning, etc.
If your antenna is currently a hamstick, then, yes, spruce it up first!
Anything more than a couple hundred watts just
creates QRM--it becomes brute force rather than technique!
Suppose you have a couple of hundred watts and you are trying to work DX on 160
meters. There will be lots of times that you call a station and he simply
doesn't hear you. If you are just below the noise level at his location, a
couple of DB may put you just over, and you will be heard. You can work a lot
of DX with low power, but that doesn't mean that there's no value in higher power.
In truth, I'm just a tad disappointed that a company, which has such strong
roots in lower power equipment and innovation, finds it necessary to jump into
the QRO market. I realize that everyone has to make a living somehow, but
the incredible talent in that company could seemingly be much better utilized
in a thousand other ways than amps. I can only conclude that the markup must
be phenominal!
I find this statement offensive. Your personal prejudices are not moral
imperatives. There's nothing evil about QRO, and a manufacturer selling QRO
equipment is not profiting from sin. Given the short transmitting duty cycle
and the relatively small amount of time we spend operating, the additional
energy expended by QRO station compared to a 100 watt station is small indeed.
The markup is not phenomenal, by the way. If you have ever built high power
gear either with tubes or solid-state devices, you know that the cost of the
components is much greater.
In the US we are permitted by our license to use 1500 watts. We are also
required to use the minimum amount of power necessary to maintain communication
in any particular case. I suggest that we improve ourselves morally (and
legally) by trying to follow this last rule rather than beating up on the
manfacturers of amplifiers.
--
73,
Vic, K2VCO
Fresno CA
http://www.qsl.net/k2vco
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