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
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