For those of you not familiar with the term QRPp it means to operate at power levels of less than one watt.
The purpose of today’s tests on Foel Fenlli was to see how far I could work on 2m with 50mW of fm and 500mW of ssb. I know that appears to be the wrong way around but the lowest power level on the FT817 is 500mW whereas I can operate 50mW fm with the Kenwood TH-F7E, but no ssb.
Arrived at the summit and set up in good time for the 1100hrs alert.
Great wx with hardly any breeze and some sunshine also.
Used my recently acquired SB3 Sota Beam for the first time and very pleased with it. Certainly a lot easier to erect than the 9ele Tonna I use for contests!
Made a good start with a S2S with M0SGB/P and G6DDQ/P on SP-002 and made a further 3 S2S over the next hour, NW-044, NW-001 and NW-040.
Made 23 contacts using the 50mW of fm and it was closely fought for the best dx!
Mick 2E0HJD at 97km, Steve M0SGB/P & Myke G6DDQ/P at 98km and Mike G4BLH at 100km. (Distances calculated centre to centre of locator square)
So at a power of 50mW this equates to 2000 km/W!
Then went over to ssb and increased the power by a factor of ten.
Two S2S, Paul GW4MD/P SW-008 (149km) and Peter SP-010.
Best distances worked were 100, 120, 123, 149 and 166km. The latter being Bob G6YTB in Crick.
166km at 500mW equates to 332 km/W, less than the fm figure on this occasion.
I found fm more intersting than ssb and will certainly give it another go next year and try to beat my personal best!
There is one thing I can’t make my mind up about and would appreciate some opinions on it.
All the contacts today were made at the lowest power level in each mode and I never went up to 5W as stated in my alert.
Would it be acceptable in the spirit of the challenge to establish contact using say 5W, then going down to 500mW and exchanging reports followed by 50mW?
This would obviously make things easier but is it ‘cheating’?
Met Dave G0AOD who arrived at the summit as I was about to pack up.
Nice to put a face to a callsign. I have worked Dave many times in various contests.
Best wishes to all for 2008.
Ron, GW4EVX