on 8/16/01 8:11 PM, Steve Hajducek at n2ckh@cybercomm.net wrote:
> 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.
I would say that power on these bands is needed just to help with getting
above the noise. I wouldn't say that it has so much to do with trying to
overcome other operators.
>
> 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.
Well, I respectfully disagree about the 400 W bit. The current legal limit
helps a lot when band condx are barely there on 10m, 6m and so forth.
What's sad is that the fact that some guys decide to run 14KW. Then in
order to overcome those guys, everyone else ratchets up their power a notch
and in turn the original guys crank it up more, etc. So effectively, the
noise floor on HF goes through the roof and the weak DX station somewhere up
the band can no longer be heard.
Let's face it. Even if a 14KW amplifier has and -45 dBc 3rd order IM
product, that power level is about half a watt which is enough to be heard
round the world. If that amplifier has only -35 dBc IM, the IM products are
now up to about 4 Watts (Basing this on the fact that 14KW is approximately
71 dBm).
Combine the fact of the extra intermod now produced by everyone with the
intermod generated in everyone's receiver front end due to the strong
carriers and we can now see why no one can hear the weak DX station.
I don't see the lure in running that kind of power. When I was building my
4-1000A, one ham told me that within a year I'd no longer find it sufficient
and that I'd be building a bigger one. That was about 3 years ago. Nope,
my single tube amp is fine for me. I am happy when I am running legal limit
from a rood mounted crappy old TA-33 and some station in Siberia tells me I
have broadcast quality audio and am coming in 30 to 40 dB over 9. That
doesn't happen every day obviously but it's happened more than once. To me
that's satisfying enough.
As far as the DX pileups go. I don't think it would be fun to run any more
power. As it is, I feel that when running my amp it's like shooting fish in
a barrel. I found DX work much more challenging when I was running 100W to
a vertical. Yes, there are some pileups that I just can't crack like when
some rare Pacific Island is on and I hear him 10 over 9 yet all he is
working is the 6's running 14 KW. But that's part of the challenge. Sure,
some have gotten away from me because of that, but why should I be a
butthole just because they are?
73,
Jon
NA9D
-------------------------------------
Jon Ogden
NA9D (ex: KE9NA)
Member: ARRL, AMSAT, DXCC, NRA
http://www.qsl.net/ke9na
"A life lived in fear is a life half lived."
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