Managed to get two more states on Feld-Hell this evening, and also gave out two first QSOs. Ah, accomplishment! In addition to Feld-Hell, we also changed modes to MFSK16 and Olivia after that. MFSK16 was great at 2W on his side, 5W on my side, with a tuner-upper in the middle. On Olivia we had to QRO to 10W!
Both MFSK15 and Olivia are great keyboard-to-keyboard rag-chewing modes. Nothing beats perhaps the best QRP mode out there, currenty WSJT either JT65A or WSPR.
Thinking about a breed of DIY xcvrs (ala-Steve-Melt Solder-Weber KD1JV or Tony-Softrock-Parks KB9YIG or Ashhar “BITX20” FarhanVU2ESE)…why do all DIY homebrewed Xcvrs need to be for CW? 5 – 10W on the digital modes mentioned above is more than enough, especially when the band is open. Heck, even PSK31 is good at that level (if you don’t mind talking to a macro…ouch! I’m being ugly!”
By the way, I called and had come back to me an Idaho station on 75M…I forgot my power was set to 11 Watts. I could have probably completed the QSO at that level as well but condx were rough and I QROed to 100W. Still, QRP makes a guy think really hard about possibilities, especially when propogation is good.