wrote in message
oups.com...
He did IMPLY that all conditions were equal in the case of 1 watt and
the case of 25 watts. Given that, all thats left is the old 1/r^2
which means that 1 watt gives 1/5 the distance of 25 watts.

Not necessarily. With my 2 m amateur radio I could transmit 250 miles on 5
watts from a mountain. Since the main problem is line of sight versus power
having 25 times the power does not mean five times the distance. With 5
watts I can regularly hit some repeaters from 50 miles away. When I go up to
50 watts I only get at best a 5 mile or 10 % increase in range. The square
root of ten is about 3.1 so I should get 150 miles but I never do. There are
more factors than root of power increase as the earth is not flat.

Robert
va3ilw
Midnight Sun.