Back to QRP and a 2 way QRP contact today with S52TLN

It has been some time since I have had the time to blog about my radio activities. My day job and young family have taken the majority of my time since my last post. Fortunately I have been enjoying a half-term break here in the UK. This is the break in an academic term for a much needed rest for educators and students alike. I have also been very busy working on my photography and improving my online presence and industry links to go alongside my lecturing.

I have spent the majority of my radio time working on improving my CW skills and making a few contacts and not always focusing on the QRP aspect of the hobby that I like so much. Recently I have been looking over my QRP log for the last year working out how many points I had for our local QRP challenge. When I was doing this I realised the last year netted me some great QRP DX including Senegal and Djibouti as well as some nice low power contacts into North America and Canada. It served as a reminder that when I turn the power down I can still work stations some distance away and interesting DX at that. I might add that the more successful contacts have come from me working on CW and building that as a skill. I have found that where QRP SSB activity limits me to calling a many times that with QRP CW I am often able to work a station with very simple wire antennas and often with one or two calls.

Today I had another reminder that QRP works. I decided to make use of an afternoon without the children here to play on the radio. I called CQ on 15m SSB (Shameful using 200w rig power) and was called by S52TLN - Tilen from Slovenia. He was running 5w from a FT-817 into a simple wire antenna. I figured if I can hear him then I should turn down the power to 5w and join in at QRP levels. We maintained a great contact at this power level and Tilen lowered his power further and was still readable here although there was more noise the signal level did not drop that much. I was politely reminded by the event that I can reduce my power and still make contacts and do not have to keep QRP for CW contacts only.

I will endeavour to keep more of the activity updated in the blog and will add some more technical adventures too.

Best 73 and remember QRP does work even on SSB.

Comments

  1. Anonymous20 February 2015 at 18:09

    It was great meeting you! Hope that we'll hear on the air again!

    73 de S52TLN

    ReplyDelete
  2. Alistair - M0TEF20 February 2015 at 18:56

    Thanks Tilen, I hope you have some great QRP contacts and GD DX with the FT-817 de M0TEF

    ReplyDelete

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