[CQ-Contest] Reciprocity in signal strength

[Tom Hellem]

That sounds reasonable on paper. But in the real world it seems more complicated than that. Local noise can really throw things out of whack. When I operate from my city qth, I’m hamstrung with a constant S-5 noise level, and at times it gets up to S-8. There is no doubt it costs me 100’s of q’s in a contest.

Tom
K0SN

> On Jan 22, 2023, at 5:52 AM, Barry Jacobson <bdj at alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> 
> Hi guys, it seems that in a contest like NAQP where presumably almost
> everyone is running the same 100 W power, you should be able to hear the
> other guy at the same level he hears you. Even if the other guy has a
> $25,000 dollar beam, and you have a simple 10 foot random wire, the
> weakness in your transmission ability will also weaken your received signal
> just as much in the other direction. So if you can hear him, it guarantees
> he can hear you. (Unless one or both of you has separate receive and
> transmit antennas, or the receivers you are using are of very different
> quality.) Does that make any sense?
> 
> Barry WA2VIU
> 
> --
> Barry Jacobson
> WA2VIU
> bdj at alum.mit.edu
> @bdj_phd
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