[TenTec] QRP

[Jim Lowman]

Nr5q@AOL.COM wrote:
 
> Please help me understand. I am being perfectly sincere--this is not meant to
> be a "cute," or smart-alec type letter...What is the big deal about buying a
> good rig and then making it work as poorly as you can?

Brucee---

There are a couple of schools of thought on this.  While many QRP
enthusiasts that
I know use rigs strictly designed for low-power operation, and may not
even own any
QRO gear, others choose to use a QRO rig and turn the power down to 5
watts or less
if that is possible.  

While some may turn the power down to 5 watts or even less on a QRO rig,
this allows
them to experiment with low-power communication without immediate
investment in QRP
gear.  Also, they can take advantage of features on their QRO gear that
may be absent
on a QRP rig, such as DSP, filtering at more than one IF, and the like. 
Two of the
OTs in the local area first advanced the latter idea to me, and these
are die-hard
QRO operators.

Another good friend and staunch QRPer in the local area countered the
proposal to use
a rig designed for QRO operation with the notion that part of the QRPer
philosophy is
minimalism.

There is general agreement in the QRP community that 5 watts or less of
power output
is the only hard-and-fast standard.  Others will argue that using an
antenna with
more than unity gain is not true QRP.  

The bottom line is, with power being fixed at 5 watts or less, the other
parameters
such as receiver quality, antenna and location, are the areas for
optimization.  While
many of the QRP rigs have good receivers, they probably are not as good
as, say, an
FT-1000MP.

Those are my thoughts.  Hope I shed some light on the issue for you.

73 de Jim - AD6CW

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