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

[Olsen's Tours and Training]

Shame about the crowds at Dalhousie  tho

I remember camping there alone- almost impossible these days


On 10/06/2011, at 9:38 PM, Ian Bennett wrote:

> 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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>> 
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