----- Original Message -----
From: "Catherine James" <catherine.james@att.net>
To: <amps@contesting.com>; "Jim Thomson" <jim.thom@telus.net>
Sent: Saturday, May 20, 2017 11:23 PM
Subject: Re: [Amps] new amp race
I watched as EU ruined itself in contests with super high power big
antenna stations.
Result seems to be they can not hear weaker long distant stations.... so
end up working
each other in a band full of huge sigs.
Seems now everyone everywhere is looking for at least 2.5 KW fighting
low sunspots and egos.
I'd blame this more on sunspot lows than egos. Egos have always been with
us, but
we are seeing unprecedented poor solar conditions. Every cycle since 1958
has been weaker
than the one before. Even solar max isn't what it used to be. It's no
surprise that people are
doing what they can to improve their station performance.
That said, given the cost of 2.5 KW+, you are talking about a handful of
Big Guns. The average
Little Pistol doesn't even have US legal limit and isn't likely to get
there.
Jim Thomson <jim.thom@telus.net> wrote:
then we have the issue of the ambient noise on RX slowly increasing over
the
years..... similar to light pollution for amateur astronomers.
I've noticed the light pollution all right, but I'm not seeing global RF
pollution. It's mostly very
localized, in the ham's neighborhood, or even in his own house. That
means it can be fought,
case by case.
It's very RF quiet at my rural location. I'm not hearing a lot of
over-the-horizon noise. Hams in or
very close to cities have other problems, but those Big Guns that the
previous poster was talking
about are probably setting up their superstations well away from urban RF
noise.
On 2 meters, I see a huge increase in noise when I point the beam at
Boston, which is about 180
miles away. It's quiet on pretty much every other bearing.
Some folks are maxed out for ants already, they cant get any more gain
on their postage sized city lot. Noise is higher, so no wonder 1 kw is
now the new 100w.
Yes, it irritates me to see an endless stream of comments in many forums
along the lines of
"don't get an amp, invest in better antennas," usually posted by hams with
legal limit amps. :-/
For most people, getting much past a half-wave dipole quickly gets very
expensive. In some
cases, the cost starts with the first step -- sell your house and move to
where you can put up good
antennas, without space restrictions, HOAs, close neighbors, etc. And
that is the point where most
will say, "Sorry, can't do that."
It's often more cost-effective to buy a 500 or 1 kw amp, rather than put
up a tower with full-sized
tribanders. And the amp will help on the low bands, where we spend more
and more time during
solar lows, but the tribander won't. (Rotatable beams for 40 meters and
below are the province of a
tiny population of elite hams.)
73,
Cathy
N5WVR
A 2 el Shorty 40 isnt out of anyones capability as Cushcraft has proven for
several decades and now more brands are available with decent performance as
compared to the rotary dummy loads of the past.
There are several 2500-3000 W amps on the used market using commonly
available tubes and homebrew is still alive and well with the bigger Russian
tubes as well as Eimac. The Chinese 3CX3000A7, built with Eimac supplied
tooling, is a fine tube and a bargain in the $800 range. Use one of the 400W
rigs or an AL-600 booster amp. A SB-200 works fine if 160 isnt requires.
Bigger Eimac and European/Chinese tubes are readily available.
Ive always been able to scan for band noise on 6M and could hear US and EU
urban area noise even before ham signals. Granted it is much worse now.
Carl
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