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

Bob - VK5FO aprs at pilbara.com.au
Fri Jun 10 21:35:38 EST 2011


Years ago, we lost the tuning tip from our Terlin HF antenna.

We went to K-Mart and bought a $2 crocheting hook from the haberdashery 
section.  It worked for over 10 years like that!

So, don't dismiss the simple, cheap solutions like this :)





On 10/06/2011 7:57 PM, 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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