Efficient SSB transmissions

On the Bands Operating Procedures
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Let me make a comment to those SSB operators talking too softly to their microphones. When we are working on SSB, the output power of our rigs is driven by and proportional to the strength of the audio signal sent by the microphone to the rig’s circuitry and that signal strength is mainly produced by the operator’s voice. Using a 5W QRP rig and talking softly to the microphone might mean that we are actually transmitting with 1 or 2 watts max. In order to get close to the max 5W output power of our rigs, we must have the microphone pretty close to our mouth and speak loud using our voice to produce our words with more energy. It’s always helpful having an output power indicator giving us a reading of the actual power our rig is transmitting at any time.
I know talking loud to the microphone might be annoying to other people around in the summit but that’s the price of making a powerful and efficient transmission. The alternative is working CW… :wink:
73,

Guru

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…and, if you think there is even the remotest possibility that you are one of those activators who holds the mike in a fixed position, but are distracted by the sights, consider a boom mike. This has the added benefit of freeing up your hands for real-time logging. Despite all the bad press that speech compression gets, it really is effective! If your rig has it, great. If not, the Chinese have some really tiny PC boards with the typical SSM2167 speech compressor chip on them for not much money. Have not got around to evaluating mine yet, but didn’t somebody do a review of them on here a while back?

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