As an almost purely 10m operator I would  agree that 59 sigs would need about 50watts for a qso on many occasions. 10m is a strange band in many ways and those strong stations you hear could easily be running kilowatts into multi-element beams. 10m takes to being "burned up" to become active... most times qrp simply won't cut the mustard on 10m ssb.
I have a HTX100 (predecessor to the HTX110 I guess???) which now runs the Irish 10m beacon EI0TEN on 28.209Mhz. At one stage that was the only rig I had. I worked less than a dozen SSB stations with it in 2+ years. I did however work over 80 countries on CW... there's a moral in there somewhere ) A vertically polarised antenna may also not be the ideal choice. Almost all ssb comms on 10m will be horizontally polarised - try a dipole...
73
Cormac, EI4HQ
Manager, EI0TEN

Could anyone send the transmitter specs for this rig to me (as given in the manual pse). I'm making a beacon application here in EI that will use the HTX as the transmitter. The authorities want the technical specs. of the transmitter - unfortunately I lost my manual some years ago when the ship I was on sank (no honestly!) - saved the rig but lost the paperwork...

Tnx & 73

Cormac EI4HQ

G'day All,

I'm currently assembling a 12vDC shack (i.e. no mains to be seen). I have a good bank of 12v batteries and everything from lighting to rigs and PC's running off them. However I'm currently having to lug the batteries to mains to recharge them at regular intervals.

Theres plenty of wind where I am so I'd like to try my hand at building a wind generator to trickle charge the batteries. Has anyone tried one of these? I've scoured the web but only found commercial stuff so far.

I don't need a large capacity generator as the shack is not heavily used. A break of about 48 hours between operating stints is common giving ample opportunity for the batteries to charge up. I would like the generator to be relatively discrete also... ). The smallest commercial model seen on the web has a blade diameter of 1.3m...

73

Cormac EI4HQ
Cork, Ireland.