Hi Peter, My little radio is an Elecraft KX1 (www.elecraft.com). It's built from a kit and it's a CW (Morse) only transceiver, so only suitable for the portion of the ham population that's into that. It's designed specifically for backpacking and weighs a pound with 6 AA lithium batteries. A voice HF radio has to be single side band (SSB), which is the standard for marine, aricraft, and amateur HF because of it's efficiency- that is, SSB gets through with less power tham AM or FM. There's no reason a handheld size HF SSB radio couldn't be made- in fact, there was at least one made for the 10 meter ham band. I think it's more a matter of lack of (perceived) market. SSB radios are a little more complicated than FM because you have to be able to fine tune the received signal, but you're right, it doesn't have to be THAT complicated. Short antennas (such as used for HF mobile from a car or power boat) are less efficient than large antennas, which has to be made up with power. Still, lots of low power hams (the QRP crowd) make contacts over thousands of miles with less than 5 watts into 7 or 8 foot mobile antennas. But those antennas are still much larger than the typical VHF handhelds "rubber duck" antenna. I carry my KX1 on most backpack trips, partly for fun but also for emergencies. I'm often the only ham and the only one who can use Morse, so also long as someone else gets hurt, not me.... I'm not an experienced sea kayaker (most of my experience is white water and small inland lakes here in Arizona), but I think that an HF SSB radio, whether marine or amateur, couldn't be counted on out on the water. Between the low power and inefficient, low antenna you could not make reliable contact in an emergency. You would have to reach land where you could set up a better (usually wire) antenna. On the other hand, some have experimented with long wire antennas supported by balloons and kites... something to think about. You're certainly right about power vs. line of sight on VHF. There are ham 2 meter handhelds that are credit card sized that put out 0.3 watts. They work fine as long as they're line of sight to a repeater or another transceiver. Cheers, Bruce Flagstaff, Arizona *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - Any opinions or suggestions expressed here are solely those of the writer(s). You must assume the entire responsibility for reliance upon them. All postings copyright the author. Submissions: PaddleWise_at_PaddleWise.net Subscriptions: PaddleWise-request_at_PaddleWise.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Thu Jun 10 2004 - 06:07:30 PDT
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