In article .net,
COLIN LAMB wrote:
Hi Wayne:

!,000 watts and 8 antennas is about right for state of the art 1970s to hear
your own signal (but only sometimes (due to Faraday rotation) and even then
very weakly. The secret to using less was to "talk" to another station with
a better antenna. Today, if the other station has a gigantic antenna,
stations with 100 watts and a good single boom yagi can talk to others.

On occasion, hams have "borrowed" the radio telescope at Arecibo, PR. It is
a 1,000 foot diameter dish with 50,000 square feet of capture area. When it
was used on vhf, the other stations can use mediocre equipment and bounce
signals off the moon. I have not been able to find the actual gain of
Arecibo on vhf - but contacting them would not be a routine event and I
question whether 60 mw would do it into a moderate antenna.

Maybe on 1296 MHz or 10 GHz - but that would not meet the claimed vhf
guideline.

Back to the original post, there is a distinct advantage to using a 5 watt
transmitter over a 10 watt transmitter when you do not have a big fan out in
front of you. As a fellow pilot who routinely flies with the fan off, I use
a 5 watt transmitter. If people cannot hear me, they are often too far away
to be meaningful at the present moment.

Colin