so i've been putting this off for literally months but i finally took the KX2 out to the state park saturday and just... sat there for a few hours with a wire in a tree. running 5 watts into an endfed halfwave i built myself last winter, coax to a 9:1 unun situation.

honestly wasnt expecting much, i mostly do 100w stuff at home with a pretty decent antenna setup, so going down to 5w felt like handicapping myself for no reason. but i ended up working a station in germany on 17m which kind of blew my mind a little. took a few calls and my signal report was 57 which i still dont fully believe but whatever he seemed genuine enough.

the efficiency thing is what really got me thinking. at home i run a linear sometimes and im pushing maybe 400-500w occasionally on dx and here i am with 5 watts doing... basically the same thing? obviously conditions were good and i got lucky with the timing but it makes you wonder how much of that high power is just wasted energy. the battery i used was a 4ah lipo pack and i barely put a dent in it over like 3 hours of operating.

anyone else gone down the QRP rabbit hole and found it hard to go back? im thinking about building one of those MTR rigs, the mountain topper thing, just to have something even more minimal. curious if people think home built QRP is worth it or if the commercial stuff like elecraft or lab599 is just easier to live with.

yeah QRP will do that to you, its kind of addicting once it clicks. i built an SW-40 kit back like 15 years ago just as a project and ended up using it way more than i thought. there's something about knowing every part in the rig and then making a contact with it that feels different from just keying up a commercial radio.

the MTR is a great little rig if you're into CW, very well thought out for pack weight and battery life. i think steve weber designs are solid. only thing is the band coverage is limited so you'd want to think about which bands you actually operate before picking one. the MTR-3b gives you 40/30/20 which covers most situations for me when im out hiking.

your point about efficiency is something more people should think about honestly. propagation and antenna are doing the heavy lifting most of the time, power is sort of the last variable. not that high power doesnt help but 5 watts with a decent antenna beats 100w into a compromised one pretty consistently in my experience.

that germany contact on 5w is awesome, 17m has been really good lately. im pretty new to all this (got my general like 6 months ago) and ive been curious about QRP but honestly kind of scared to try it because i already struggle sometimes to get replies on 100w lol. maybe when conditions are good like you said its worth a shot. what wire antenna setup were you using exactly, was that just like a random length wire or did you cut it for a specific band?