[OZAPRS] How much power do you use while HF mobile?

[Gordon VK4VP]

Damien,
	I usually run about 70W mobile, but there are certainly locations
where it doesn't make much difference how much power you run, you have
trouble getting in.  The band conditions are what makes the difference I
think.



Regards,
Gordo VK4VP

-----Original Message-----
From: ozaprs-bounces at aprs.net.au [mailto:ozaprs-bounces at aprs.net.au] On
Behalf Of Damien Gardner Jnr
Sent: Friday, 10 June 2011 18:35
To: Australian APRS Users
Subject: [OZAPRS] How much power do you use while HF mobile?

Hi Folks,

So I dug out a spare welding rod, and made a new tip for the 30 metre whip
on the the car, so I could run HF as well as VHF while we're away this long
weekend.  Didn't last long, it disappeared somewhere through kangaroo
valley, but we did get excellent coverage all the way down till then :)
Will go hunting around nowra tomorrow and see if I can find a source of 3mm
welding rods, or (haha not a chance) 3mm stainless rod, but for now I picked
up a $4 fold-out mosquito net thingo from the camping section at kmart, for
putting over a plate..  That had about 1mm rods in it, cut it to the 152mm I
usually cut to, but it was centered about 300khz too far up the band..  cut
a new one 3cm longer, and bingo, 1.1 swr on 10.1mhz :)  Gotta say having the
LCD backlight set to go from blue to red on SWR during transmit is
absolutely fantastic - you know straight away if something's wrong!

Anyway, my question - While i was giving the car a test-drive with the
antenna on, on thursday morning, I had my HF SSID appear on my D710 - seems
it was picked up somewhere and gated around about and ended up out on VHF
via an igate...  What did surprise me, was I still had the 857 set to 5w,
from tuning in the antenna!  Now I usually run 50w on HF, but having done
lots of playing with PSK31 and the like recently, I'm realising that power
really doesn't make a whole lot of difference on HF, and having landed in
noosa on 5w, I'm wondering if I need to be running 50W..

Sooo - what power do folks usually run on HF APRS? :)

Cheers,

Damien

VK2TDG
_______________________________________________
OZAPRS mailing list
OZAPRS at aprs.net.au
http://lists.aprs.net.au/mailman/listinfo/ozaprs