My friend, WB4KDI, from Birmingham, AL, and I were running some QRP and QRPp experiments with his new Elecraft K3 A week ago on the 30 meter band. David and I were running JT65, and he dialed his power down to 100 mW, the lowest setting of his K3. I had no trouble copying him at -18 to -16 dB. On my end, the path didn’t seem to be working as well in the reverse direction but he was able to copy my 500 mW signal with no problem.
I was thinking how cool it was that David had managed to get about 12,000 miles per watt in our contact. I was going back through the signal reports to document things when I noticed that Laurie, VK3AMA in Melbourne Australia, was also hearing him at -22 dB. Unfortunately that was a RB report which doesn’t count for real, but WB4KDI’s signal traveled 96,000 miles per watt that night.
Every day I am more impressed with JT65.
