Quote:
Originally Posted by Particle Man
I can only imagine. They could also invest in some resonant antennas, too 
I put a max of 140 watts or so into the tuner I have - it is supposedly rated for 300 but I'm guessing it'd start to arc badly at close to 215 or so. |
That's well beyond my know-how, ours were 20 watt man-packables. The 10' whips they came with are generally worthless for HF (most freqs that's what, 1/8 wave?), so we were stuck running field expedients (read: speaker wire and a cobra head). At 20 watts, proper tuning is not optional. And I wasn't very successful even once I had a decent tuner. At any rate we didn't have to worry about arcing, but your fingers might get a little warm if you were holding the antenna while you keyed (guilty, I'm a moron).
This was back in the '90's. When I was re-activated in '09, the military had pretty much gone strictly to SATCOM for long range comms. Worked great in the sandbox and I was glad to have it, but it's gonna hit us in the feels if we ever try to fight a war in trees again. NO ONE will know how to bounce a sky wave.
I understand they have a few volunteer-run SATCOM projects for ham operators now. That's kinda crazy.