In the past I said that increasing 10m WSPR ERP was probably not worth it. However, I have changed my mind. G4IKZ (not that far from me) runs 5W and a Moxon beam on 10m WSPR. His ERP in the best direction is probably 10-13dB higher than me, and maybe even more. On RX he will have the gain of the Moxon in his favour. Looking at reports on WSPRnet today, he has been copied by far more stations than me and he is copying some decent stuff on RX too.
No, I think in more marginal 10m conditions the extra would be worth having. For now, I'll stick with the beacon and 500mW, but I may switch to the FT817 so I can run a bit more power on TX and listen too on 10m WSPR. My antenna is a compromise.
Always makes sense in marginal conditions,as you say.
ReplyDeleteI rather think that at reception the *directivity* is more important than gain per se. The background noise level on 10m is more than 10dB over the noise of a good receiver.
Good to see the first transatlantic (North) coming through.
In the last few days I set up a vertical 1/2 wave antenna for 10m (actually a shortened CB antenna), and the bandwidth of this antenna is really wide. Works all the way from just under 27 to 29.7MHz (yes - tried with a cb rig). It is only 3m up with the feed point, and, hopefully in the week end, I will increase that to just about 7m.
The signals are higher than with my low dipole already, so I expect the results to be pretty good when it goes up.
73, Jan, OZ9QV