Come on Roy, your picking an example that has nothing to do with the real
world. How many people try to work 20 meters on a 2 foot Sony whip?

I failed to state the obvious. Given: Both stations are using antennas
matched to the transmitter and of a length appropriate to the band being
utilized. YaDa YaDa.

Back in the AM days, my wife heard me coming out of a skillet on the stove.
I doubt she could have talked back to me no matter how high she turned up
the heat. :)




"Roy Lewallen" wrote in message
...
The idea that if you can hear a station he can hear you is totally
wrong, especially at HF. At HF, you can have a terribly inefficient
antenna and hear people just fine. This is because the dominant noise is
coming from outside the receiver and therefore both signal and noise are
attenuated by the same amount by the loss. I can easily hear 20 meter DX
on my little Sony SW radio with a 2 foot rod antenna. But there's no
hope they'd hear me if I were transmitting with that antenna, even if
I'm running an equal or much greater amount of power than they are.

At VHF and above, where receiver noise dominates, a station you hear can
hear you if you're running about the same amount of power and if your
receivers have about the same noise figure. But this isn't at all true
at HF and below.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Fred W4JLE wrote:
Come on Roy, your picking an example that has nothing to do with the real
world. How many people try to work 20 meters on a 2 foot Sony whip?

Possibly the same people who want to work 80 meters on an 8 foot whip !!!!

SNIPPED

"Ham op" wrote in message
...
Fred W4JLE wrote:
Come on Roy, your picking an example that has nothing to do with the
real
world. How many people try to work 20 meters on a 2 foot Sony whip?

Possibly the same people who want to work 80 meters on an 8 foot whip !!!!

SNIPPED

It s easy to see you have no concept of how things work. An 8 foot whip is
about as big as most mobiles can use. I just worked a friend of mine that
does a lot of camping. He uses either a screwdriver antenna or a dipole
only up about 10 to 15 feet depending on where he is at. Most distances are
around 200 miles from my house. There does not seem to be much differance
in his signal with that low dipole. I am sure the dipole would be beter if
he could get it up higher, but you use what you have.

Many times the absolute strength of the signal does not make that much
differance. It is how well you can get above the noise and qrm that is on
the bands. That is where the beter antenna and higher power come in.

All of this is for the low bands , when you get to vhf and above then the
antenna system usually becomes all important.