Do More With Less

Is the title of this blog.  Of course, as a QRPer, I am referring to operating using low power - 5 Watts or less.  For the non-believers (and sorry, I don't mean to make this sound like a religion - perhaps skeptics would have been a better word), 5 Watts will get you nowhere unless you have mega-aluminum in the air.  You know, what I'm talking about - the kind of antenna farm you can see using Google Earth.

Time to debunk that Urban Myth, also.  Not to toot my horn; but I have worked all 50 States and over 100 DXCC entities using nothing more than a Butternut HF9V vertical and simple wire antennas (G5RV or 88' EDZ).  Any my accomplishments are PUNY, small and not noteworthy at all!  My accomplishments are nothing, nil, zip, nada!  There are people out there who are on the DXCC Honor Roll using 5 Watts and not that much in the way of antennas.

But maybe the benchmark, is none other than a Ham that I mention here from time to time - John Shannon K3WWP.  John is eligible for awards many times over using 5 Watts or less and very simple antennas. And if that wasn't enough - he has currently had at least one QRP QSO for over 6,200 consecutive days.  That is just over 17 years, my friends!  Through sunspot highs and sunspot lows, through geomagnetic storms and other anomalies,  John has kept his 5 Watts out there in the aether, working the world.   And he has done this with the following:

http://naqcc.info/k3wwp/antennas/antennas.html

So the next time you look at your antenna farm and you're tempted to bemoan the fact that it's small and that it's not much as compared to the Big Guns, and that it can't be seen using Google Earth - take heart. People are accomplishing great feats every day using not much more (and sometimes less!) than you and I have.

72 de Larry W2LJ
QRP - When you care to send the very least!