In contesting circles the ability to increase your signal into europe, et.
al., by 1.76 dB is highly coveted and not to be sneezed at...
One contestor, when asked by his wife what a dB was, replied, "About $1500
at this station!"...
During one contest we had lost a couple of amps and the 20 meter gang wound
up using an amp which was sitting outside the trailer on a piece of plywood
(in the rain, no less) and they had no power meter visible to them... Later
that night they commented to me that they were getting pushed around for a
couple of hours and having problems holding the frequency and wondered if
the amp was ok?... I went outside and checked the Bird and the output was
down to 900w, from 1350w when the amp had been pressed into service... I
fired up the backup amp, also sitting in the rain under a tarp
(actually, the backup to the backup... it had been that kind of luck in
that contest... we trashed enough amps to start a good size repair center)
and switched the coax running out the window over to the fresh amp, banged
on the window to let them know they were good to go and went on to the a
problem with the generators... When I got back later I told them about the
amp switch and they stated that it was a big help and that they immediately
stopped being pushed around like they had been for a couple of hours prior
to the change...
Now, by theory the change from 1350w to 900w and later back to 1400w should
not have made any perceptible difference, but it does... Interestingly, in
this case the operators had no idea until later what I had done, if
anything, but they saw the improvement in the rate of qso's....
Cheers ... Denny
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