Hi Roy -- reminds me of the time I worked an S79 on 15M phone. Very weak but
the contact was made. I posted the S79 on the DX packet cluster. A local big
gun came back at me with "Miniprop sez there is absolutely no propagation to
the Seychelles".

I replied Oh Gosh, I had better send the QSL card back when it gets here.
The QSL did arrive. I decided to keep it.

I have an old wife here -- don't listen to her either hi hi.

--
Caveat Lector -- I'll take an S-unit increase every time.



"Roy Lewallen" wrote in message
...
Ah, c'mon. Reg says 7 dB isn't enough to worry about. "Kurt Sterba" said
that even 15 dB isn't. All the people who think that linears and beams
help their signals are just imagining things. The real experts say so.
You're not going to listen to the old wives, are you?

Roy Lewallen, W7EL
-- One of Reg's "Old Wives"

Caveat Lector wrote:
I would like to put a different spin on the 7dB statement below.

Where the extra gain or power really comes into play is very weak signal
DXing - not the pileups necessarily.

Cases in point - my Dxing log has several contacts where using a linear
got my signal far enough above the noise level for the DX station to
understand me. True on phone or CW. In most of these cases, the DX was
calling QRZ and no one was answering -- the DX station was so weak --
seems folks just gave up or maybe everyone worked them. Turning on the
linear got me the contacts. Definitely Without Question - Worked an R1MV
Malyj Vysotskij, HK0 Malpelo Is, VK9/M Mellish Reef, and VP8/G So Georgia
by turning on the linear feeding a vertical multibander.

I had this happen enough times to realize this to be the real benefit of
adding a linear. And it sure can't hurt in a pileup either, if you know
how to work a pileup.