Life is too short for QRP. If it exhibits greater spectral purity at the same time, BRING IT ON! Win Win
Some people prefer methods of operation that do not include struggling to hear, or struggling to be heard. To each his own as long as we don't interfer with each other. Two tin cans and a string gets old quick.
Au contraire! I wrote a letter to my rep years ago about the rule forbidding ASCII teletype. In two weeks I had a letter from the FCC Chair, and in a month the rule was thrown out. The agencies are afraid of the reps.
True dat! FCC regs state, §97.313 Transmitter power standards. (a) An amateur station must use the minimum transmitter power necessary to carry out the desired communications. If propagation doesn't cooperate, and /or or the QRN, PL noise, or OTHR 'pecker, are fired up, adding dB of increased power output "to carry out the desired communication" is mandated. It's not desirable by most to be unable to carry out a comfortable friendly rag-chew under such conditions, nor miss working a rare DX that has a huge pile-up. More gain means more efficient use of bandwidth and time with less errors and repeats. Judging by the number of QRP / mobile / portable stations that break-in when I am rag-chewing with buddies (like flies to flypaper) it seems they have few alternatives to hear or call if we weren't there using QRO. And I try to pick up every one of them. I also support DX op's running pile-ups occasionally standing by for QRP / mobile and respect such interludes. But all too often I hear calls by those go unanswered; just not enough smoke! 73 de John - WØPV
I spend 99% of my radio time listening rather than transmitting. I have to say that in my experience, the crap I hear on some of the ham bands is WAY WAY worse than what can be heard at my location on CB these days, believe it or not. Yes, there are some ignoramuses running really dirty amps... on BOTH services. But comparing something like 7200 to ANYthing I've heard on CB is impossible. Listen for yourself. Changing the so-called 15db rule will change NOTHING.
Here's how to comment: Go to http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/upload/display Fill in "Proceedings number" with RM-11767. Then fill out the form and upload your comment as a pdf or doc.
And don't anyone think I am anti-QRP! Quite the contrary. I have an FT-817. Using it at 5 watts and a 5 element Yagi at 25 ft AGL from EL87 there are now 40 states confirmed toward WAS and > 175 VUCC grids on LOTW, working steadily toward the 10th band of DXCC (but doubt the Magic Band will be all QRP), even a nice QRP QSO QSL card from ZL1RS! If that's not enough, just for yucks it often gets used mobile, barefoot, with just a hamstick mag-mounted on the trunk! Now what kind of twisted radio S&M fetish is that ?! 73 de John - WØPV
Gents, These are different topics. Amplifier gain has nothing to do with the wattage a ham decides to run. The whole law was stupid from the beginning. Watts are still watts!!! And none of this changes that the max legal limit is 1500 watts! This is just like gun laws! The only person that cares is the law abiding person. If a CBer wants to run juice he doesn't care about the laws or 1500 watts that hams can run. The stupid gain rule didn't prevent anything. That alone means it should be repealed. Let alone that the rule has no effect on ham radio and is technically obsolete. If you don't understand this, then you don't understand the law. None of this has anything to do with the state of our ham bands. What does have everything to do with it is that new "no-code" hams are not leaving their CB BS behind. Many good hams came from CB land. I did! Most switch to ham radio as an escape from the crap the CB bands are. Again, I did. These new hams are not being taught proper operating procedures. Personally, I didn't have many bad habits to shake because I didn't use much CB lingo to begin with. http://www.arrl.org/operating-ethics http://www.arrl.org/files/file/DXCC/Eth-operating-EN-ARRL-CORR-JAN-2011.pdf The FCC isn't going to spend the time or the money fixing our bands. Self policing usually means that one polices oneself. Maybe it should start meaning a bit more. First the ARRL/VEC should give every newly passed ham a copy of these internationally adopted ethics and operating procedures. Maybe even obtain a signed copy of ethics and operating procedures. Not as a truly legal binding document (but maybe it could be!) but as a way of reminding that all operators are supposed to know how to operate ethically. Maybe a friendly email to poor operators with a copy of this document attached? It's out there but we are not insisting that we follow them. There's nothing objectionable in this document. Unless you are simply an asshole that doesn't want to be polite and follow the rules. Yup, not everyone will conform, but then we'll know what other operators to steer clear of. I for one have even considered starting a website or youtube page with video/audio recordings of bad operators. Complete with a video of spectrum used. But I was told to "get a life!" when I suggested this elsewhere. Might piss a few buttheads off, but would possibly embarrass quite a few operators into better behavior. For many people just knowing that there are things like this out there may just clean up without having to be publicly embarrassed! IMHO only we will be able to take care of this. History has proven, that if we do nothing it won't get better. Or worse yet the government (FCC) will get involved and make it worse! Thank you, Ed WD4ED
I have so many comments on this issue, that I hardly know where to begin. I guess, to sum it up on the issue of QRO vs QRP, it depends what you want to do in ham radio. If you want to compete with the QRO staions in DX contests, contact the first P5 station on the air, do EME, etc., your probably need to do QRO. If you're interested in using the super-sensitive digital modes, mountain topping (and don't want to carry a generator in you back pack), hiking, using repeaters, participating in QRP contests -- or in the QRP category in contests, etc., you'll probably go for QRP. And everything else is something in between. Also, if you're transmitting with an indoor antenna 5 feet in front of your face, you won't be able to use QRO.
Fifteen dB is not a barrier to "superior reception and transmitted purity ". SDRs are not restricted to "QRP" output levels. Perhaps I missed it but I do not see mention of an output(0dBm would be nice) for pre-distortion sampling on the existing Expert specification sheets.
wd8crt, I don't have a smart phone I don't need one and I'll never be a mindless idiot walking around on the street twiddling my fingers looking at a stupid smartphone while missing everything around me. Radio is fine with me, you can settle for QRP or 100 or even 1500 watts but not me, I like power and since I'm a free American I want the largest legal amp that I can build and 1.5 kw is just not enough so if you want to take a back seat to other countries having more than Americans then go ahead not me I want 2kw just like a lot of other countries do. Expert linears is correct on having the 15 db limit removed but I wish they would also go for 2 KW at the same time, my letter to the FCC will be 2 seperate ones, one to eliminate the 15 db rule and a second to gives US hams the same power limit as the highest available to other foreign hams. As I said I have moderate sized and medium height antennas so i need to make up the loss in power and with the ever increasing noise floor at the dx stations end, which is something that can't be fixed by our FCC, then there is no choice but to increase power on my end. CW on 6 meters which is my main operation mode on this band would be a lot easier with 2 kw as opposed to 1.5, especially with the poor propagation that is normal up here in the Pacific Northwest, and if none of you negative commenters have never experienced PNW crappy propagation then you don't have any right speak negatively about gain and power increases. At my Arizona QTH which is orders of magnitude better than my PNW home even 2kw would be a big improvement on 40, 80 and 160 meters.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ No, they're better than us since they have voice privileges down to 14.100; as a matter of fact the whole world has those privileges so why don't we? We're just as good as anyone else yet we're hamstrung! de NK2U
I am fan and admire the quality operators of both QRP and QRO. With the advent of such high quality exciters and the ability to use a step-up amplifier already there, there is no reason to leave this rule on the books. Our focus should be on the quality out - both in operator and in every technical sense. Arbitrary legacy rules do nothing to better either. Yet perhaps if Amp manufacturers are confident enough of their product's performance to move towards higher gain we would actually see an improvement in observed performance on the bands? The noisemakers lurking in our hobby that some are worring about are unlikely to be Expert's customer for a new $4-8,000 Amp. But those buying or building new amps, including the LDMOS module designs, will have the opportunity to excite their high gain allowed amp while eliminating potentially distortion producing intermediate amplification. Anything that betters the breed should be something we all can support. YMMV but this does seem to be of such small downside risk while providing potential for improvements that we all should be able to get behind the change. 73 Steve K9ZW
