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

[Ian Bennett]

Nowra sounds like Uluru; absolute black hole for RF. No APRS, no VKS737, no 
Amateur HF bands either.
Compare that with Dalhousie Springs; probably the best RF site I've come 
across thus far :-)

On Fri, 10 Jun 2011 20:27:47 Damien Gardner Jnr wrote:
> 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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