Hello Ken and all,
Ken you were a big gun ATV DXer.... I was just a little pistol
there too... hi hi
I am sure that there are many amateurs around the world that
exceed the legal limit in the country in which they live, if there
is one. It does them no good and it does the rest of us no good.
Don't get me wrong, I love my amplifiers, heck I even have one
in line with the QRP rig just in case a new one comes along
that I can't get with 5 watts.
During contests, huge pileups and on 160m and to a lesser
extent 75/80m more than 100w is needed on a regular basis
too in my opinion. I would say 600w is the minimum for
success on 160m.
However, all the stations that run the legal or more all the time
just rag chewing are over time going to have the effect of the
FCC in the U.S. changing our RF power levels. Hopefully, if
this happens it will be a scaled RF level vs. frequency where
the higher in F the lower RF with up to 14Mhz making it to
the current 1.5Kw and not an across the board 400w as many
countries live with now, it that. At 24Mhz and above 400w and
less is fine when propagation is in place, even for VHF contesting
and moon bounce 400w would be fine.
To me the thrill to me is making the contact with as little
everything as possible and knowing it was my skill in addition
to propagation and being in the right place at the right time. I
do detract from that thrill as the clock starts ticking away and
the propagation starts to fail and my chances to nab that one
looks dim in that I start to increase the RF output up to the
legal limit and if I succeed, the pleasure and satisfaction are
still derived but less than at less.
Perhaps my outlook may be a bit different if I were rich and
could afford to keep replacing the 4CX1000A tubes and pay
the electric bill, but not much.
As to 5 and 6 land stations, the most amazing thing in my
21 years on 6 meters was last summer when North Africa
was coming in, my antenna was pointed that way from here
in central New Jersey and I heard stations from around the
country as strong or stronger than the locals, especially
from 5 and 6 land stations. I started thinking about that
6m project 5CX3000 tube and socket sitting here again,
that is until I remembered the heater current draw, heck
I also have to put up the big DX-Engineering 25 foot
boom'er too !
Big amp's plus big ego's equals a big problem.
/s/ Steve, N2CKH
http://www.qsl.net/n2ckh
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