Time for FreeDV QRP ?

This video on Marxy's blog was interesting:

https://blog.marxy.org/2025/08/freedv-radev1-comared-to-sideband-at.html 

560 km or about 350 miles apart on the 40 meter band during the day.   FreeDV exhibits that just above the noise "perfection" of a digital mode.  As long as there isn't too much fading it looks very promising.  The narrowness of the FreeDV RADE V1 signal is amazing - no one could complain about it's width, especially at such low power levels.

At first I was wondering about the relatively low power levels used for SSB in the video.  But then I realized that when the "Bart head" is transmitted (digital transmissions all look like the top of Bart Simpson's head in the frequency domain) it's like going key-down CW or RTTY, in other words a 100% duty cycle.  SSB is generally much lower at 20 to 50% duty cycle so SSB is much less taxing on the transmitter than a key-down mode like RTTY.  I suppose a comparison of the signals might have been better for SSB at 100 watts or higher.

My old Milwaukee favorite, Koss, makes USB headsets eh ?  :)

Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm