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Date: Tue, 14 Aug 2007 11:21:31 +0100 (BST)
From: John Pumford-Green GM4SLV <gm4slv@sighthound.demon.co.uk>
To: rsgb_lf_group@blacksheep.org
Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0708141100010.10082@lurcher.twatt.local>
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Subject: LF: QRP Experiments
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Status: O

LF,

Last night, after the UK's best DX 500kHz QSO so far between G3OLB and 
GM4SLV (unless anyone knows differently!) I went on to have a QSO of 
over 1 hour with Finbar, GI4DPE, starting at approx 22:00 UTC

Conditions were much better than previous nights, with less QRN/Static 
crashing.

After initial reports at our normal power levels we each progressively 
reduced output power.

I copied Finbar, reading normal CW by ear, at 250mW RST339 and just got 
bits at 100mW, say 229

He copied my 1W okay - his WinRadio reporting S0.7 (fractional 
S-meter..!) Further reductions were uncalibrated as I have no 
sensitive "QRP" power meter to verify my next reduction, but went 
to somewhere close to 500mW and Finbar successfully copied, and sent 
back to me, a sequence of 4 random numbers I sent (1498 from memory) at 
this power level.

The low QRN levels obviously helped.

At a rough guess (extrapolating from previous measurements at 5W and 
above) my antenna current at that power would be around 90mA, 
for an estimated ERP of around 2mW!

Conditions were pretty good last night, but despite calling CQ after 
finishing with Finbar I heard no other stations before retiring to bed 
at 00:45 Local time.

Regards,

John GM4SLV