Is two Watts enough?

This is just funny. Rarotonga is around 3500km from Norfolk, with the path entirely over salt water.

I bumped into E51WLG on 28 MHz – Thomas, N2WLG holidaying on South Cook Island, running an IC-7300 into a beach vertical.

Loud like a bell. A couple of clicks later, he was in my log. Not a big deal – when 10m is open, it is open.

After the contact – I noticed that the power slider on my WSJT-x which regulates the output power on IC-7700 was barely engaged.

I was running less than 2 Watts.

The morale of the story: running low power (QRP) on FT8 mode will still yield plenty of contacts. In many cases, it is all about your antenna and a quiet location.

A few years ago I was part of a group called ‘mill watt project’ where a bunch of us would make proper two way digital contacts running milliwatts, often below 100mW.

In the spring of 2011, running just 10mW on 7MHz (into a quarter wave vertical), I would regularly get reports from KL7UK in Alaska and VE4KE in Manitoba, Canada.

The setup consisted of a home-made SDR QRP transceiver with adjustable attenuator with multiple level options, and the power was measured directly at the antenna connector with an oscilloscope. The race to the bottom – and what fun it was!