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

[Damien Gardner Jnr]

Ahhh, if only Kmart still sold such things!  I scoured homewares, then autos, then camping - and my three possibilities were a dish drainer from homewares, a bread toaster thingy from camping, or the little fly netting thingy from camping..  If i'd had a heap of spare time, a 4mm tent peg could have been made to work, with a file ;)   But a crocheting hook, awesome!  I'll expand my search criteria a bit while I'm out around nowra this morning :)

Cheers,

DG

On 10/06/2011, at 9:35 PM, Bob - VK5FO wrote:

> 
> 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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