6200 miles on 3.5W and an end-fed.

[gil]

I am gloating tonight about my latest contact, 6200 miles to Russia with the Weber MTR. Low on batteries (9.9V, eight AA cells), maybe 3.5W into my PAR end-fed. Not bad for a radio the size of a pack of cigarettes! Usually when I hit Eastern Europe, it ends up being around 5000/5200 miles.. This time I went a bit further. I heard him very strong in the lower CW section of 40m. He barely heard me but contact was made.

Gil.

[KC9TNH]

Nice. 40m at night lately has been pretty good. Get the occasional crash locally from the little heat-generated T-cell wannabe's before they go to bed, but prop itself has been good to support CW anyway.

[RadioRay]

Congratulation on the radio contact, Gil.  God on the far end too, pulling out the weak signal and having the contact with you.  It certainly lets HIM know that his receiver is excellent as well.

Last year I had a pipeline on forty between my station and a QRP ham on Maui.  We bumped into each other for weeks on end and had long rag chews.  His was a K2 and mine the KX1 or the Wilderness Sierra.  Nothing special for antennas, a dipole of some kind here and his mutiband vertical mounted on the tin roof over his rented garage. He DID use a noise nulling bridge to drop his noise floor considerably.  I used one when I lived in a rental , due to a LOUD battery charger one of the goobers had on an electric mini-motorcycle.  The battery charger was evidently made from a Bulgarian surplus radio jammer, at least that's what it sounded like  :o ??? ::) :'((sans CW ID).

Radio is Magic.



>de RadioRay ..._ ._

[gil]

Sure is... I am wondering though why I only get Europe... Only one South American station so far, no Asian, Australian, or African stations at all... Might be either the hours I get on the air or my antenna radiating pattern...

Gil.

[KC9TNH]

Sure is... I am wondering though why I only get Europe... Only one South American station so far, no Asian, Australian, or African stations at all... Might be either the hours I get on the air or my antenna radiating pattern...

Gil.

Australia is a serious haul for anyone in CONUS unless they live on a salt-water edge. I occasionally get South Africa & Namibia, can regularly work Caribbean & rest of southern hemisphere etc. from up here.  JA once in awhile (usually early in the morning).  But all of those places you mention are in the area of 50-60° different azimuths from each other. Quite possibly just some experimentation between the theory of what an antenna "should" do and what it actually does is in order. Maybe just play around with something different or re-orient what you've got a bit if you want to see hear what's what.

Also, strictly in terms of distance, my longest contacts have come on 17 and 15m. At higher bands, and if reasonably in the clear, end-feds have a pretty predictable plume, much lower take-off angle in terms of band (and more gain at that angle), so you could orient accordingly. The beauty of an end-fed is one could literally hang the radiating end somewhere and play ring around the compass-rosy with the feed-point. On 20, but especially on 17 & 15, try "pointing" an end-fed 30-45° offset from your target.
:)

[Lamewolf]

QRP and CW does work !  I remember once making a contact to Australia and I'm in Ohio on 2 watts on 40 meters from an SW-40 rig I built from a kit.  The antenna was a converted CB vertical that I added a coil to so it would be resonant on 40 meters.  I could hardly believe my ears when the other op told me where he was, and that was over 10000 miles !