I sure love QRP

[Kd5txx]

So, today I was charging the battery on my KX2 and so I hooked up my HB1B and tuned around 20m.  Heard a guy calling CQ 599 so I threw out my call.  He was in New Brunswick about 1000 miles from me.  I told him I was QRP with 3 Watts and he replied that he was QRP also with 5 Watts.  Both of us were using end fed antennas about 15 feet up in trees.  It was good to actually talk to someone.  Been a lot of POTA recently and just 599 KY.  I was using my bencher paddle and he was on a straight key.  That?s all.  I?m still amazed by what you can do with low power after all these years.

 

[Ham4CW]

I'll say one thing, running QRP teaches you to pay attention to what the propagation is doing.

My 'best dx' was to work a guy in central New York from here in the Midlands (UK), running my TenTec 1320 with about 3W output. The antenna was a loaded dipole in the attic (the antenna was only about ten feet long). It made my day!

The antenna was home-brewed from some cheap bamboo fishing poles from a local pound store (think dollar store), some old fencing wire, and some cardboard tubes (salvaged from rolls of thermal printer paper at work), used to make the formers for the loading coils. I still have the antenna in the attic, albeit not connected to anything at the moment.

73, Mark...

 

[Kd5txx]

Those kind of contacts are fantastic.  Last spring I was up at 0200 Andy turned on the rig.  Heard a guy in France so I called and worked him.  Told him I was QRP with 4 watts and he later emailed me and told me to apply for the SKCC 1000 miles per watt.  Because he was 4100 miles from me.  The next morning I checked and had had the radio set at 5 watts.  So around 0200 that night I went back down to the basement, turned the rig to 3.5 watts just to be sure and worked him again.  That?s the furthest that I know of.  Did it on 40m with 100 feet of coax and 2 jumpers to my end fed 40m sloped 15 feet up a pole in my yard. 

 

[Ham4CW]

A while back I was trying out a portable magnetic loop antenna. I had one of my antenna analyzers hooked up to it. Just for fun I thought I would see if the signal would show up on any Web SDR receivers. I was amazed to find that my analyzer signal WAS showing up on several different ones around Europe and also some in various island countries. That was about 50-100mW.

So I then hooked up another analyzer that I knew had even less output power, about 5-10mW. I could still make out my carrier on about half of the Web SDR sites!

I 'think' I might still have the screen grabs I took at the time (for posterity!), I'll have a look and see if I can find them and post them on the forum.

If nothing else it proved just how good a magnetic loop could perform, not outdoors in a 'good' location, but just propped up on a bed in the bedroom of the house.

73, Mark...