I strongly agree with this. Years ago, I had a similar experience with
JT65 on 160M in a sked with a station in ND. He decoded at -12 and said
he was running 40 or 50W, so I called him at that power level. No
response, so I increased power in 2X (3dB) steps until he answered. I
had to get to the top of the KPA500 before he responded.
I'm convinced that most hams have high noise levels, much of the noise
produced by stuff in their own homes that they have not bothered to get
rid of. Here's my tutorial on doing that.
http://k9yc.com/KillingReceiveNoise.pdf and slides for my talk at
Visalia two years ago.
http://k9yc.com/KillingRXNoiseVisalia.pdf
50W IS plenty of power for most QSOs on the HF bands, but it is NOT for
5,000 mile paths on 160M, or multi-hop E-skip on 6M. I'm about 70 miles
S of San Francisco (which puts EU in the range of 5,000 - 6,500 miles
and over the polar region to get there) with a pretty decent antenna
farm, including both a Beverage and pair of phased loops beamed to EU.
For at least three years I never heard a single EU station on CW, heard
only three this year, and running 1500W, managed to work only one of them.
Running FT8 on 160M this season, I made about 20 QSOs to EU, 10 of them
new countries on the band. I had to run 1500W to do it, and I made lots
of calls to stations who were in the range of -12 to -22. I'm also
trying to finish 160M QRP WAS, and need VT and SC. Unfortunately, the
stations working FT8 in those states are either noise limited, or don't
have (or don't use) RX antennas pointed in this direction.
I've had similar experience on 6M -- I regularly give better signal
reports than I receive.
OTOH, I AM bothered by stations constantly CQing on 160M running high
power when the band is not open to DX, and working less than 1,000
miles. I almost never call CQ, but rather find a clear spot to TX, lock
my TX to that frequency, and wait for decodes on stations I want to work.
DXpeditions are often the easiest to work with low power, because they
have very good operators, take both RX and TX antennas seriously, and
mostly work to keep noise levels low. I often work DXpeditions with 5W.
73, Jim K9YC
On 3/22/2019 12:51 PM, RIchard Williams via Elecraft wrote:
Where did you come up with one does not need to run more than 250 W using FT8??
I have never read that anywhere in the literature I have read about FT8.
How many countries have you worked on 160M using 50 or so watts? I have worked
more than one country on 160M using 1500 watts feeding a pair of phased
verticals and have received a signal report below -20db. I highly doubt 250W
would have been sufficient.
A good rule is to run the minimum power necessary to make the contact; and yes,
many times 250W is way more than you need.
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