"Jim Hampton" wrote in message
...
John,

Sorry if I'm not impressed; 75 and 40 meters are good for hundreds of
miles
on low power; thousands of miles at night. I ran 25 watts on 160 meters
and
was good to cover the United States at night.

Power is not everything. The ability to change frequencies (I'm talking
decades, not channels) will determine what distances you can send and
receive well to. I remember well breaking into a group on 75 meters in
the
Carolinas. I was running well under 1 watt. Way *way* under 1 watt.

160 meters did me quite well even in the daytime. Check in to ground
wave.
Not what you think of ground wave (which is space wave); true ground wave.
At that frequency, if you have it vertically polarized, the wave will
react
to the curvature of the earth as a knife edge. I could pound into
Washington, D.C. in the afternoon. With all of 65 watts.

My handheld reaches into Canada 24/7. On 440 MHz. Of course, I have to
rely on a decent Canadian repeater for that, but the fact is that I hit a
Canadian repeater directly from the handheld with no Internet involved.

On hf, the proper choice (I'll leave 160 out of this as the antennas are
quite unwieldy) between 80 and 40 will allow you several hundred miles
24/7.
With a modest amount of power.

So I remain unimpressed with power alone. I buzzed right through a
kilowatt
station years ago running only 75 watts. It isn't the size of the ship;
it's the motion through the ocean )


73 from Rochester, NY
Jim AA2QA



heh heh, Jim...I think you're probably above this guy's ability to, well,
understand

Kim W5TIT