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

[Damien Gardner Jnr]

True I think - having pulled into Nowra, and (temporarily) fixed my antenna, with it lightly raining, and very overcast, I can't get a packet out even on 100W!  I even sat there for five mins turning the OT1+ on and off every 30 seconds, so it would keep sending posit packets, but not a brass razoo ended up on the APRS network!

--DG

On 10/06/2011, at 8:06 PM, Gordon VK4VP wrote:

> 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
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