7 Jun 2024

500uW 10m WSPR versus 2.5W 6m FT8

At the moment I am doing two experiments. 

Firstly, my 500uW (0.5mW) 10m WSPR beacon is on. 

Secondly, I am trying 2.5W FT8 on 6m. 

Every day I get Es spots from Europe with my 6m QRP FT8. 10m WSPR at 500uW is proving far harder with just a few spots a week being average. 

In theory WSPR works with signals having a far worse S/N than FT8. However, WSPR needs almost 120 seconds for a TX burst whereas FT8 needs just under 15 seconds.

I suspect that the longer time to successfully decode a WSPR signal and the fact that a 500uW signal is probably buried in noise is working against me.

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