[TenTec] What Radio?

[Frank Kirschner]

In my experience, and I'm sure there are folks on this list with much more experience and perhaps more astute observations, I agree with your number of around 500 watts. I use a Centurion amp (which I love), and usually run a maximum of 500 watts, never more than about 700 watts. I've found that any station I can hear will respond with around 500 watts, so more power would only make me audible to stations I can't hear. The most common situation in which more power would be useful is getting through a pile-up competing against very high power stations. I've found that having some patience, waiting for the big guns with > 1.5 KW to finish, and waiting for the band conditions to change slightly, usually gets me through with my 500 watt maximum. When I ran 100 watts, fifteen to twenty percent of the stations I could hear didn't respond. When I run barefoot at 200 watts, only the weakest stations don't respond. Of course, it's usually the weakest stations that I most want to contact.

 I'm currently using a 102-ft doublet with reasonable results, but am planning on putting up a Yagi soon. It will be interesting to see if there is a difference in the maximum useful power with an antenna with some gain.

 73, Frank
 KF6E

----- Original Message -----
From: Richards
Sent: 09/10/11 08:41 PM
To: Discussion of Ten-Tec Equipment
Subject: Re: [TenTec] What Radio?

 Serious question -- So... where does it stop ? If 200 watts makes a 100 watt rig just a bit better, why would a 300 watt amp not make that 200 watt rig just a bit better and find you even more DX ? And so on down the slippery slope to megawatts, each little bit digging more DX out than the previous bit? How far down the slippery slope do we go before diminishing returns cancels any marginal value from marginal additional power? What circumstances and factors would force a different answer for different operators? (Serious question - not just making an argument. -- Personally, I find the maximum usable power is about 450-500 watts... any more and I don't make more contacts that I do at that level, but should this not differ depending on antenna type and deployment, and other factors such as external noise levels, etc.??) ---------------- Happy Trails. ======================= Richards / K8JHR ========================= On 9/10/2011 14:51, jack wrote: > I agree totally. I have 100 W and know that any boost would have helped in > several cases over the years. I have missed considerable DX because I could > not increase the power. there are many stations I have heard but could not > hear me due to QRM or QRN. _______________________________________________ TenTec mailing list TenTec at contesting.com http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/tentec