QRP is amazing if you think about it.

[KE5FRF]

Last night I had a CW QSO on 20 meters from my QTH in Louisiana to a station in Iowa who was running 2 watts QRP with a simple no gain dipole at 35 ft if I remember the elevation correctly. I had a solid steady copy on his signal with very little fading and had a complete QSO no problem.

I just got to thinking about how very little power 2 watts is, and considered the nighlight lightbulb in my bathroom. It is a whopping 4 watts, and is barely bright enough to brush your teeth by or use the bathroom without missing the water (hihi). Of course, radiant light and RF are two different animals, but still...

when you put QRP in that kind of perspective, it is really amazing, just my observation.

[AK7V]

Yep.

I'm 100% QRP, 100% CW. I run 5 watts max. I chat with al2i with some regularity all the way up in northern Alaska. I've had QSOs with Japan, Australia, New Zeland, Russia, Finland, Germany... all QRP. And all with the same crummy random-wire antenna up about 15-20 feet.

Granted, the other guys have good stations with good ears. But I can contact them and that's what matters.

I can also hit stations as far as southern CA at S9 on 40 meters when conditions are right, so people don't always have to dig for a QRP signal.

[WA5VQM]

Last weekend there was some QRP event going on. I turned the rig down to 10W (as low as it goes) and worked several QRPers on 20M. No problems.

Just wait until we get in the better part of the cycle....

73, Mark

[WA5KRP]

Wouldn't you agree it's part of the magic of radio? #As silly as it sounds, I still get wowed when somebody with a ½ watt HT can go through a repeater and be heard over 1000mi². #When I travel and see a 20M beam somewhere along a far off back road, I think about how that station is nanoseconds from my own in Texas while I may be days away.

And yes, I've worked numerous CW ops with ≥559 sigs, only to find they're running 1 or 2 watts to a crappy wire antenna out an apartment window. #That's a definite wow.

Magic.


WA5KRP
Texas

[KL7AJ]

I was floored when I heard some hams recently received a signal from Voyager II. Now THAT is some serious QRP!

[WA5KRP]

Quote[/b] (kl7aj @ May 03 2006,10:28)]I was floored when I heard some hams recently received a signal from Voyager II. # Now THAT is some serious QRP!

Redefined the term DX, too.



WA5KRP
Texas

[CU2JT]

I have worked some dozen of QRP stations around 7040 KHz. The record was a guy in Detroit runnin 0.25 watts.

If the frequency is clear and the noise level is reasonable, you should be able to work almost any country with 1 watt.

But, there are folks maintaining that "life is too short for QRP"

[KD6NIG]

Jus imagine how far out in space our "big gun" stations may reach if any of it burns through the atmosphere. If you can reach that far on 5w, imagine how far 1500W goes.

One of these days martians are going to land and say "CQ DX" in greeting, thinking thats how we say hello.

[WA2ZDY]

It's not that QRP can't get through, it's that everything else is so much stronger. We here don't need 1500w PEP output except that so many of us already are so we need to keep up in too many cases.

At the dawn of the CW age (right after WW1 when King Spark was upon his deathbed) very few hams were running more than 10-50 watts and a LOT were running 5w. The guys running a KW were 6AM and a few other rare ones who could afford the tubes.

No, the "common man" was using receiving tubes - the 201,202 and even 210 to put out a few watts. And once ham had the problems of getting on the short waves worked out, those guys worked the world.

Wait until the sunspots are back in force. 10 will be every bit as magical as 6, even better depending on your tastes. Work anywhere in the world as long as it's daylight with five watts and a few feet of wire. My first 10m work was with an inverted vee hung from the light fixture on my bedroom ceiling. That was in 1978 or 79 and I did indeed work the world with that antenna.

QRP is old news, and sadly it's largely forgotten news by too many.

[KE5FRF]

Quote[/b] (KD6NIG @ May 03 2006,10:37)]Jus imagine how far out in space our "big gun" stations may reach if any of it burns through the atmosphere. #If you can reach that far on 5w, imagine how far 1500W goes.

One of these days martians are going to land and say "CQ DX" in greeting, thinking thats how we say hello.

HiHi! Now that would be funny!
"CQDX, Take me to your leader's QTH."

Or worse, they come to us and say "Dahdit-dahdit Dahdahditdah" !!!

Anyway, I was doing some thinking about the value of QRP over Big Gun stations. I don't myself run a QRP rig, but I eventually plan to build a kit, and operate QRP. Why would I want to do that? Well, here are some analogies that I think explain why QRP seems so fun to me...

Take skeet shooting as a metaphor. Having a Big Gun kilowatt station, to me, is sort of like skeet shooting with an M-60. Yeah, you can hit the target almost every time with a quick burst of the trigger, but where is the skill and challenge?

The age old fishing analogy also works. Yeah, I could go fishing with a big net in a well stocked lake and pull up tons of fish, and have all the fishmeat I can eat, but how much more enjoyment does a fly fisherman with homemade lures get in a mountain stream, catching only a handfull of trout, but all with skill and craftsmanship?

I don't have anything against Big Gun powerful stations, and certainly if someone intends to use their station for emcomms a reliable strong signal is important, and for DX contesting a great antenna and a little power sure makes the difference, but still, QRP just seems a bit more magical and mysterious to me. How much more value and satisfaction does a QRP operator get from the ocassional QSL card from a DX QSO than the Big Gun contestor who gets tons of QSLs every time he works a pileup?

I think as my skills improve and I get further along in this hobby, I will find myself building a QRP rig and enjoying this particular aspect quite a bit.

Just my spin on an interesting topic.