[TowerTalk] RF Pattern

[Bill Ogden]

The RF patterns (for safety) discussion is interesting.  What seems to be
missing in much of the discussion is a definition of "average power". How
is this determined?  For example, if I am a "hunt and pounce" CW DXer who
transmits less than 1% of my operational time --- but might hit 20% for
short periods in a pileup ---- how do I use the formulas and compute
"average power"?   Is "average power" computed the same way for controlled
and uncontrolled areas?  If my operational time varies from 0 to maybe 2
hours a day---with a long term average of 30 minutes a day---how is this
averaged for these computations?

I assume that actual CW transmission might have 50% average key-down power
and SSB somewhat less.

For operators in my general category, where the long-term transmitting
average time is a few minutes per day (CW or SSB) it would seem that these
averages will dominate any of the exposure computations.  Really heavy use
of RTTY, FM, etc, is a completely different matter and would appear to be
so different that they should be computed differently.  For my type of
operation, it would seem that (provided someone does not lean his head
against the center of a beam or dipole) any reasonable operation is safe,
even with a KW transmitter.

Am I way off the mark here?

Bill - W2WO