Monday, October 05, 2009

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.

5 comments:

  1. Hello Julian, that's a great achievement by John. I am still surprised what low power and low profile antennas can do. 2 days ago I was reported by ZL2RX 18.490 km with 500 milliwatt WSPR. Sometimes I can't believe it. 73, Paul PC4T

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  2. Yes, WSPR is pretty amazing the way it can dig something out of the noise you can't even hear. Now to have a two-way contact with ZL using 500mW - that would be an achievement!

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  3. I think it's amazing when you do it with a 3 element full size yagi. Could it be possible with 500mW and a indoor antenna? WSJT could be a option?

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  4. Hello Julian,

    Thanks for the heads up on the QRP ARCI club. I'll look into that one.

    Sent my info to NAQCC but am off to the mountains for a few days. Hopefully the certificate will arrive while I'm gone.

    72's
    John N8ZYA

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  5. Julian I too recently had a QRP contact with KZ1H. See
    http://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2009/12/crossing-pond-to-kz1h.html

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