1000 miles per watt with an indoor antenna

Congratulations to John, N8ZYA for receiving the eQSL confirming his contact with LZ2BE on the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, made using 5W of CW to an indoor Isotron antenna. At 5,219 miles, that works out at more than 1,000 miles per watt, so John can now claim for the QRP ARCI 1000 Miles Per Watt award to hang on his shack wall.

I suspect it may be easier, perversely enough, to make 1,000 miles per watt using only one watt of power, because then you only need to make a contact of over 1,000 miles, which can be done in a single hop. Looking back in my log, the contact I made with George, KZ1H near Boston, MA on 6 April 2009 using my MFJ Cub must surely qualify. I never even mentioned the contact at the time, as I'd spent the day putting a huff and puff VFO stabilizer into the Cub, and had made the contact simply to test it.

The distance from Boston to the west coast of England is over 3,000 miles, so even though the Cub put out getting on for 1.5 watts into my attic dipole, that's a comfortable 2,000 miles per watt. I only received a 419 report for my signal, compared to John's 559. However, KZ1H isn't a member of eQSL so I'm still waiting for a confirmation of the contact.