HF band conditions are not all that good at the moment. I was on 20m (in itself an indication that conditions on the higher bands are poor) and tried to call a couple of US stations but all I got was QRZ? I heard Jarda OK1DMZ calling CQ and he was a strong signal so I replied. Back came a 599 report. It was only when I sent the station details and sent my power that I realized I had it set to 5 watts!
I've lost count of the times I've found myself accidentally operating QRP because the rig was set to 5 watts after having been WSPRing at that power level. In better conditions I've made several contacts before realizing my mistake, which just shows that QRP does not always result in having a weak signal. But when conditions are like they are at the moment, power helps!
2 comments:
Good evening Julian, there have been times when I have not heard any DX but some U.S stations. I decided to give them a shout and have a nice QSO....but for some reason they just are not hearing me. Then I realize my power setting it still set to 500mW's from the night before.....I then jack it up to 5 watts and make the contact.
Mike
As you know there is a difference of 2 S-points between 5 and 100 watts. In general you can work a lot with 5 W power with good propagations. 73 Paul
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