As found posted in another group. Stimulated thinking and as quoted.
73
Bob, K4TAX
"We need more power. I'm giving her all she's got, Captain! She cannae
take anymore.
I'm sure your Scottish ancestors are rolling in their graves right now, but in
our community of radio amateurs we have a tendency to advocate the use of more
power. More power fixes all problems and hides all sins. Another way to look
at that is to think of the station with more power as an alligator, all mouth,
no ears.
Before you dismiss this as another advocacy for QRP or low power, let me point
out that more power creates more interference, more potential for harm, more
electricity consumption, more wear and tear and more cost. Previously I've
spoken extensively about QRP communications, making contact with 5 Watt or
less, but let's have a look at how much less. I've shared with you that I
managed to contact a station on the other side of the planet with only 5 Watts,
Perth to Cuba and for me that was proof positive that all this was possible,
even feasible. We're doing much better than that.
One measurement is to calculate how many kilometers per Watt you achieved. My
example of 5 Watt between Perth and Cuba is the equivalent of 3592 km per Watt.
The maximum distance to the opposite side of our globe is about 20,000 km and
my contact did nearly 18,000 km. If you think that's amazing, I should warn
you, my contact was special, for me, but as low power contacts go, it's not
that amazing.
The first solid state radio contact made across the Atlantic ocean managed over
76,000 km per Watt. That was on 18 September 1956. You'll find the radio on
display at the ARRL Laboratory, together with the bug and station log showing
the contact between Chelmsford, Massachusetts and Copenhagen, Denmark between
Gus W1OGU and Bo OZ7BO, on a radio made of two germanium transistors and built
by Gus W1OGU, Al W1OSF and Dick W1UBC, who built the diminutive gadget on a
lark to see if they could Work All Continents with it.
If you can copy the 40 micro-watt CW beacon run by the North American QRP CW
Club, you too can join in the fun. The current record stands at just under 22
million km per Watt when Bill W4ZV managed to copy the code word OMAHA from the
N2XE beacon from New London, North Carolina. Just to be clear, we're talking
about a signal that traveled the equivalent of 22 million km using 1 Watt of
power. If you think that was amazing, Pioneer 10 managed to achieve 1.3
billion, that's 1.3 thousand million km per Watt in 2003. Mind you, that record
was achieved with a slightly bulky antenna, the Deep Space Network.
Are you ready for more?
The current record stands at just under double the Pioneer 10 record, just
under 2.6 billion km per Watt. That was achieved by Dick KL7YU and Bill W7BVV
who made contacts between Alaska and Oregon in December 1969 and January 1970.
A distance of 2655 km using one micro Watt.
Yes, you can throw a Kilowatt at the problem, or you can take your time, do
some work and have some fun with low power. You can call it QRP, or you can
call it just enough to get the job done.
Onno VK6FLAB"
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