David Clemons wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> When I was a teenager, I remember reading an April Fool's article
> in either CQ or QST which said that some heretofore unknown German scientist
> had discovered that QRP operation worked better than QRO. (His papers were
> subsequently lost in WWII but recently were rediscovered.) The theory
> behind this astounding discovery was that QRO signals heated up the
> ionesphere so much that most of their energy was lost.
>
> I believed this for several years, even occasionally detuned my HT-40
> to "boost" my signal! When I finally asked my Dad about it, he said he
> remembered the article but that it was an April Fool's joke.
Wait a minute, I remember this one...I'm sure it was true, I have
believed it for years. They found that if you went down to about 1 watt
ERP or less, the ionosphere had an "amplification effect" which would
make your signal "louder."
In the '60s I tested this by running transatlantis 80 meter ssb QSOs
with one watt ERP from my station DL4FQ in Germany. You mean to tell me
it was not true and I was not really talking to those VE stations on
80??
Whoa! It boggles my mind! I'll go back and erase my log book....
73
Chuck, KE5FI
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