Foundations Of Amateur Radio

Foundations of Amateur Radio A phrase I hear regularly is "life's too short for QRP" and today I think that it's appropriate to start a conversation about that sentiment. When propagation is poor the high-power amplifiers get on air and use it to prove that you need power to get out and about. Far be it for me to deny another amateur the pleasure of working a thousand stations at the same time, a so-called pile-up. It's a thrill. I've done it during contests. It's fun. You call CQ and the biggest problem you're faced with is deciding on which station to pick. In the past I've mentioned that I've made a contact with Cuba, about 18,000 km away using 5 Watts. Over the weekend I managed just under a third of the distance, Perth to Tuvalu, 7,000 km with a wire and 5 Watts. You could take away from this that I like bragging about my contacts and it's true that I'm proud of having achieved those things, but that's not actually what I want to talk about. Amateur Radio is a lot like fishing. You can go out and thr