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

[Ian Bennett]

Rubbish!!!! You can NEVER have too much power ;-)
Steve is itching for me to put my two bobs worth in......
When we went across the Simpson Desert in 2009, I used a VK2ZSZ modified 
Wagner (with a VK1IAN constructed embedded opentracker ;-) ) running at 50W.
The antenna was a rewound 4055KHz whip that measures about 2m long on a 12mm 
fibreglass pole (can't remember the brand but that was contributed by 
VK1TGX).
Anyway, coverage for the whole trip was fabulous; in Steve's words "it was 
like watching me around town on VHF".
I too had trouble keeping the tip, having broken it 3 three times. When I got 
home, I "retuned" it so it didn't need a tip. Lot of mucking about as the 
heatshrink affects the tuning, but I will never lose a tip again :-)
I can't speak highly enough of the people around Oz and NZ that operate and 
maintain the HF Igates. Non-amateurs who are barely computer literate, were 
able to watch our progress. I'll be doing the same for our Lake Eyre trip in 
2012; hopefully with a few more QSO's this time.
Anyway, given the Wagner is rated for 100W, I'm keeping mine at 50W as I am a 
firm believer in "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".
So what is QRP anyway?? (very TIC).

Ian
VK1IAN

On Fri, 10 Jun 2011 18:53:05 Steve wrote:
> G'day Damien,
>
> My Wagner is wound down to 15W. I've tried to make a compact HF APRS
> unit with it. It has an embedded TT3, and a DB9 plug on the side to
> accept (and power) a serial GPSr.
> I've never had it mobile (waiting for a use for it really -  maybe I'll
> get a 4WD one day?), but the antenna systems I use to test with won't be
> much better than a good mobile station I'd say!
> When I arc it up for a test, I usually get a packet in to one of the
> NSW, QLD or VIC I-Gates within two or three transmit attempts during the
> day. I'm located near Canberra and the band is 30M.
>
> I love QRP though, so I'm looking at your 5W story and thinking should I
> go down a bit more?
>
> I'd be interested in some more "real world" stories too.
>
> :-)
>
> Steve VK2ZSZ
>
> On 06/10/2011 06:35 PM, Damien Gardner Jnr wrote:
> > 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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