On 4/22/2012 8:27 PM, Irv Finkleman wrote:
It turned out that the Manual doesn't really
tell you what to do beyone the tuning point so he left things as
is, and worked mucho countries running only 15 watts!

I used to use a little FT-7 transceiver portable quite often,
and it was about a 20w input radio, and did about 10 watts out
on most bands.
Using any decent antenna, I never had any trouble working the
people I wanted to, and this was usually on 40 and 80 meters
using NVIS paths.
I remember one time I was camping out at Lake Amistad near Del Rio,TX.
I rigged up a dipole for 80m, and had it hanging between two short
trees. The antenna was only about 5 ft off the ground it's whole
length. Even with that low antenna, and the appx 10w output on SSB,
I was still in the S9+ range to most of the various people I was
talking to in say San Antonio, Dallas, etc..
For those type conditions, I would generally prefer 100w, but 10w
will usually get it done if need be. Only on the noisier nights
might it be a real issue where the extra power is needed.
These days my portable rig is the 100w Icom 706mk2g. And of course,
I can adjust the output power level to whatever I want.. I think the
minimum it will do is around 5 watts or so.. maybe slightly less..
But unless I'm worried about my battery, I let it rip at 100w..
The battery is rarely an issue as I usually can charge it off the
vehicle every once in a while.