Radiodan W7RF wrote:
>One more CQWW DX SSB contest passed and a good time was had by all
>(hopefully). Part of our amateur hobby is the radio sport of it for some,
>myself included.
>
>And once again a tail of the Italian(s) who were 10 to 20 DB over S-9 that I
>could not work!
>
>In particular IG9A was soooo strong that I thought for sure I'd work him.
>I've worked many italians on SSB and CW but in the contests "they" seem to
>"come out".
>
>When I first put up my tower in 1984 and with it a 2 ele. yagi for 40M I had
>my first taste of this. Here it is 1999 and a new 2 ele. yagi for 40M with
>legal limit output and they still aren't hearing me. I know it's not me as
>nobody from the west cost worked him while I was listening. Not just a
>simple case of being beat out by closer or better propagationed stations,
>nope, there were times when he called and called but seemingly nobody was
>calling him.
>
>Anybody have any stories of how much power those guys are actually using?
He's probably running a lot of power, but power alone cannot account for
the difference.
Let's think about this: he's 20dB over S9 with you, and the antennas and
propagation work the same both ways. So if you call him with the same
power as he's running, you'd be 20 over 9 with him too. If you call him
with your 1.5kW, you'd still be S9 if he was running 150kW... or S6-7 if
he was running 1.5MW.
The answer is much simpler: here in Europe, the entire 40m SSB band is
only 55kHz wide, so the QRM at this end is more than you can possibly
imagine!
73 from Ian G3SEK Editor, 'The VHF/UHF DX Book'
'In Practice' columnist for RadCom (RSGB)
http://www.ifwtech.demon.co.uk/g3sek
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