Friday, April 17, 2009

Boo! Hiss!

Another beautiful day today; but no lunchtime QRP. Today at work, we had a "walkthrough" of the new building by the big corporate bigwigs from Manhattan. I didn't want to stray too far because it's been my experience that, for some reason, you're never noticed when you're where you're supposed to be - but you're ALWAYS noticed when you're not where you're supposed to be!

So even though I'm entitled to an hour for lunch, discretion seemed to the better part of valor and I ate at my desk. All was not lost, however, as I spent "my hour" on the ARRL Website going through the QST Archives searching on QRP. Much to my surprise, there were 22 pages worth of hyperlinks to .pdfs and other resources. The very first articles on QRP started appearing in QST back in 1927!

Of course, the quantity of QRP related articles started exploding in the mid-80s. It was funny reading some "Letter to the Editor" from Hams complaining about QRPers with that old "the receiving station does all the work" line. I guess if that's the case, then those letter writers wouldn't have believed how many 599 RST reports I've had to give out to other QRPers.

In any event, if you're an ARRL member, make sure to mosey on over to the QST Archives and do some searching for yourself. I must have printed out 5 or 6 different articles that I really wanted to take a better look at, including a few construction articles.

73 de Larry W2LJ

3 comments:

  1. It was funny reading some "Letter to the Editor" from Hams complaining about QRPers with that old "the receiving station does all the work" line.
    Sounds like a very vocal person on the SKCC reflector.

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  2. Both sides of a contact can marvel at how little power is needed to communicate over a long distance. Most times when I work QRP, I get comments like "your qrp is doing great." And a surprising number of contacts reply to my first call. Which suggests that if some folk are having a hard time copying QRP signals, perhaps they need a better receiver. :)

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  3. How about 2 dixie cups and a string?

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