On Mon, 25 Apr 2005 22:45:50 -0700, Vic Rosenthal wrote: >Suppose you have a couple of hundred watts and you are trying to work DX on >160 >meters. There will be lots of times that you call a station and he simply >doesn't hear you. If you are just below the noise level at his location, a >couple of DB may put you just over, and you will be heard. You can work a lot >of DX with low power, but that doesn't mean that there's no value in higher power.
Exactly. I live in the middle of Chicago, where I have rather limited antennas AND a high noise level. I can work 160 with 100 watts, and have worked all but two of the lower 48 with 100 watts), but the extra 10 dB provided by a Titan amp that I bought last summer increased my score in the ARRL 160 test significantly, and made it a lot more fun. The only way I could improve my antenna system here is to buy the houses on both sides of mine and put up towers to hold an antenna. Ya got an extra $2 Million laying around? In February, I worked a 160 contest from W6BX with 100 watts and a nice antenna. There, I worked 47 states in a weekend, as well as JA and D4B. But I could work a guy in RI that I could hear quite well, simply because he had the same sort of high noise level that I have at nome. Another 6-10 dB would have made it for us. Another point. When I try to work DX on 80 or 40 with 100 watts, we exchange signal reports and maybe our names, and we're done -- the copy is too rough to do more. When I do it with the Titan on-line, the guy on the other end wants to chat, and we can get to know each other. I am confident that whatever prices Wayne and Eric establish for their amps will be fair, and when I have time, I will build one or both. The cost of our kits includes far more than the parts -- good engineering takes time, the designs and circuit layouts must be built and tested, manuals must be written, parts must be chosen with an eye toward longevity, we want tech support, and 20 years from now we would like to be able to fix the amp when something goes wrong. Ten Tec has built some pretty decent amplfiers at fair prices, and I own three of them. 20 years later, the amps are still in fine shape and good values, but try to find replacement tubes or output transistors for some of them. Those decisions alone take time, a lot of judgement, and a well-polished crystal ball. And you never know when a major manufacturer is going to cut your knees out from underneath you (like Motorola and Eimac both did to Ten Tec). Don't get me wrong -- QRP is fun, and I enjoy it. But it is not the ONLY way to enjoy ham radio. And there is a LOT more to the cost of a sophisticated product like what we buy from Elecraft than meets the eye. Jim Brown K9YC _______________________________________________ Elecraft mailing list Post to: [email protected] You must be a subscriber to post to the list. Subscriber Info (Addr. Change, sub, unsub etc.): http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/elecraft Help: http://mailman.qth.net/subscribers.htm Elecraft web page: http://www.elecraft.com
