Apr 10, 2014

Random thought of the morning...

I wonder what kind of reach I could get with a portable Yagi and my storm radio?

It punched out a full 50W on battery the other night, although I don't think I could do it for too awful long... but then again, with a decent Yagi I shouldn't need to punch out max power for solid range.

The closest SOTA region is down around Springfield, so not exactly a day trip.

Something to consider... and I may acquire a Yagi for storm stuff anyways.

2 comments:

Old NFO said...

Good question, and not a clue anymore... Haven't played with that stuff in 30 years...

Wally said...

I started to do the math on this but it's more complicated than my one cup of coffee will allow.

Antenna gain will effectively increase your radiated power, but signal strength will still decay as a cube root of distance. So +3dB certainly will not double your distance.... But it sure will increase your distance and if you had a portable yagi it would be the bee's knees if you needed to hit a repeater that would otherwise be outsize your range.

Also would be useful, tho limited, in simplex. In 2M, the other station would be much more likely to be pushing an omnidirectional antenna, so they'd be able to hear you but not able to get signal back to you. Two parties with aimed yagis, however....