07-12-2011, 01:00 PM
(07-12-2011, 12:22 PM)Yorkie Wrote: As to power levels, few UK amateurs use the maximum permitted power, which is 400Watts PEP on the DX bands. Most use commercial transceivers which typically have maximum output of 100 Watts into a perfectly matched antenna, but often the antenna isn't well matched and an antenna tuner unit will be used to achieve a match. Many transceivers will progressively reduce the power output if a mismatch is present, and I doubt that many amateurs will attain much more than 50 Watts on speech peaks at the feed point of their ('long wire?') antenna. But that said, 100 Watts is not ten times the power of ten watts - it's just double, and 1kW isn't ten times 100 Watts - it's double. Which is why QRPers manage quite happily to work the world on five Watts.
Very interesting David, what do you mean by "100 watts is not ten times the power of ten watts its just double".
The hobby is much different to what it was years ago but there are still a significant number of people home brewing.Morse is becoming more popular as well and am pleased to say many of the new foundation course licenses are interested in pracricing this mode.
I think the lack of experimentation and building etc is a sign of the times not a failing in the hobby as such. As you probably know , having a keen interest in a technical hobby for a lifetime is great because there is always something new to learn.
Regards
Mike
