How Low Can You Go? K8BYP’s Test Equipment QSO

You don’t always need a transmitter to make on-air contacts. Huh? Sometimes, as K8BYP demonstrates, the minimal power output from certain test equipment is sometimes good enough to get a message through!

DAVID CAMPBELL

Times of poor propagation are ideal for antenna optimization and testing. My 40-meter dipole has been working DX on 0.75 of a watt and less on a fairly regular basis during the recent solar minimum, but for fun, a ham friend and I decided to see how low we could go. A band with an S-0 noise level and only local propagation is great for extremely low power testing. My Yaesu FT-857 can go down to less than a watt, but that was bringing too many 5-9 reports and the power isn’t accurately adjustable. This test used a Rigol Arbitrary Waveform Generator (AWG), an extremely precise RF source which can be keyed. Its output at 7-MHz ranges from 10 volts peak-to-peak (P-P) down to the microvolt level. With the RF…

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CQ Amateur Radio (Digital) - 1 Issue, December 2022

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