Tuesday
17
June
2008
About running QRP
This posting was made by me on E-ham.net a while ago.
RE: Who uses SSB on HF QRP by SM6XIN on August 28, 2004 And another $0.02 of thougts, adding yet another perspective... I recently cranked down my 100W rig about 10dB to run at QRP-levels, just for tryning it out. Now i'm starting to becoming addiced to QRP, hi!(B.t.w. station setup is really simple, an old IC-720 and a wire trap-dipole only about 12ft off the ground!) The -6dB/S-unit really isn't all about mathematics as it seems right now, because going from about 90W PEP om SSB to about 8W PEP hasn't lowered my recieved reports with more than just about 1.5 S-unit. Still only one have made complaints about my signal beeing really difficult to read, but I know that he has an old rig and not too good antennas, so that was almost expected. About running QRP... I have tried it for about two months, not mentioning it in QSOs before I got signal reports exchanged. I have mostly gotpositive feedback like "You're really strong for only 8W". The difference isn't such a pain-in-the-ass as many of the so called QRO-folks are yelling about. They are (in my opinion) mostly only lousy operators if they complain very loudly, probably afraid of having spent a huge amount of $ unnecessary with their pride at risk. And to be honest, I have not really tried to run any SSB-DX-contacts QRP yet. There is one big advantage with QRP vs QRO that has not been brought up in this discussion yet, and that is the RF exposure level. With really low power you could litterarily sit on the antenna without problems. I wouldn't recommend that with QRO levels, hi! As for propagation... On a really crowded band it can be hard to not beeing run over by the kilowatt cannons, but when the band isn't that overpopulated there is usually absolutelly no problem making contacts at low power. An example: On the afternoon, when the sun goes down, the QRM on 75m multiplies as a lot of REALLY strong UA & RA-stations starts to propagate. Sometimes they can almost wipe out a local QSO, even in 100W-class here in Sweden. Be aware of contests too! CQ CONTEST CQ CONTEST CQ CONTEST... NAH! There will be moments when they are all over the place making regular QSOs impossible. Operating on WARC-bands are really good then. I think that if everyone starts to run the kW-rally there WILL be more and more QRM on the bands... So point is that you will be different by running QRP. Can you handle that? I certainly not expect to reach as long as I would have done with a kW-amp when running QRP, and I am more depending on the conditions, but on the other hand while not taking any QSO for granted I will be happy about the contacts that I make all the time. It is more fun, really! And when the power advantage is removed all that is left is the operating skills, though making you a better operator because when running QRP against all the big guns you will need it. Power is no substitute for skill even many operators seemes to think so... Boring! To close this of I can tell you that I am selling my 100W station and I will only have QRP stations instead. For my operating habits I don't need a lot of watts. And regarding earlier postings about playing on the other stations accounts, well let's face the fact: The other station doesn't have to do a QSO with you if the summary of propagation, recieved signal strength and readability isn't good enough for their likings. It is a free world after all, isn't it? 72/73 de David - SM6XIN