The FCC allows 1500 watts peak envelope power into the antenna on most bands. That's about 750 watts average RF power. Most hams run about 100-200 watts or less which is not as low as it seems because the level at the receive end responds logarithmically to the transmitter power.
Depends on the band. Most bands are legal at 1KW DC input. But there is a 200-watt limit on 30 meters. And on some other bands it can also be different. So it varies with the band.
At what time? Yesterday I was on 7.128 MHz* with our daily morning net (SSB, of course) between 13:00 Z and 14:00 Z. Tuning up and down the band I found a handful of other signals, but not a lot. A little prior to the net I heard a station (couldn't tell where from) calling CQ Japan.
I don't do early mornings unless it's just after midnight, before I usually hit the sack. Or sometimes around now, 0900 hrs local time. I found 40M totally dead, even on RBN in the later afternoon here. Dead until it started to get dark and then just a bit later there was so much activity that there was QRM all over the band.
Here, there was nothing even in the phone section. Not a single signal anywhere in the band, no CW, no RTTY, no SSB, no nothing other than the normal QRN. That's from first to perhaps last hour of daylight here. But it sure comes alive when it gets dark. Then I can hear the entire world from here.
You have that right. But I expect that time will be just before the entire band goes dead here, unless condix change.
I doubt it, as the S-N ratio won't be that much different when receiving and I don't hear a thing on the entire band.
