The impact of SWR on QRP

Although I've had my NorCal 40A on the air for several weeks now, I've only rarely made contacts and began to realize that I probably had to investigate the antenna side of the equation.

I spoke with Ron, N7CE, about it and he offered to let me use his tuner/SWR/watt meter. I had built a watt meter but had yet to use it. Ron stopped by at work and was good enough to loan me his MFJ-904 unit. Yesterday evening I hooked the 904 up to my NorCal 40A and immediately realized that the reason for my meager list of QSOs was extremely high SWR, on the order of 3+:1. I'm lucky I didn't damage the 40A considering how high the SWR has been.

With the antenna and transmitter now well tuned my SWR dropped to about 1.2:1 and I could see that my power out was now just above 3w. Nice. That's what it should be.

At about 0100Z I heard a CQ from NW6R (outside Sacramento, CA) and responded. Web and I had a 20-minute QSO! Great Circle distance from his QTH to mine is about 625 miles, that's about twice my previous record with the 40A during a brief QSO into Pocatello, ID a few weeks ago.

I like the display on the MFJ-904 because it's possible to know both power out and SWR. And the unit is well built. Other comparably built units feature only indicator lights so you know when you're tuned, but there is no indication of power out or true SWR.