Recently I wrote that increasing a station's ERP one db might add 10% to
its DX contest score. Several replies indicated 10% seemed a bit
overstated. The last time I looked at this subject was a few years ago.
Today, I took a look at some recent CQWW CW results by power level. Here
are scores from the 1993 contest which are fairly typical of CQWW CW
tests:
Highest QRP score (AA2U)................. 763,000
Second highest low power score (K2SG).... 1,845,000
Third highest high power score (K5ZD/1).. 5,569,000
Notice the big difference between low power and high power scores. It
seems the advantage of an extra db actually increases at higher power
levels. Moral: If you are currently really loud, getting even louder is
well worth the effort. Or, life is too short for 100 watts, too.
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Jeff K0OD St. Louis, MO USA
e-mail: k0od@mo.net
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