[AMRadio] TEST

[D. Chester]

> ...I'd be willing to venture that over 80%
> of the jerks, lids, troublemakers and miscreants who give us  a hard
> time for running AM, are ex-CB'ers.  And as you well know, CB'ers, ex
> or other wise (freebanders in particular), disdain the use of AM as
> being unworthy of true radio operators.  Only kids, drive-time
> suburbanites and  losers use AM. Every "professional" radio operator
> knows that!
>
> Ed, VA3ES

The original anti-AM element in amateur radio probably go all the way back 
to the days before CB.

Those were the first converts, the true-believers, who jumped on the SSB 
bandwagon when it was being heavily promoted during the 50's.  During that 
era, nearly every ham magazine, radio club, national radio organisation, 
etc. became a propaganda agent for SSB.  From the beginning there was some 
conflict between users of the two modes, but they seem to get along pretty 
well until the early 60's, when the cheap transceivers like Swans, Galaxies, 
Heathkit "Hotwater" rigs, and others, came on the market.  "Sideband for the 
masses"  ...and a wide open market for a new product!  Up till then, the 
only way to get on SSB was to spend a considerable sum of money on Collins 
or Central Electronics gear, or else build your own.  Many of the wannabe 
slopbucketeers had neither the financial resources to buy a commercial rig, 
nor the knowledge, expertise and test equipment necessary to build a SSB 
rig.  Once those cheap rigs hit the market, the floodgates were opened and 
that was when the great AM/SSB wars erupted in the mid-60's.  A legacy of 
this conflict that still persists to this day throughout ham radio is the 
deliberate interference and jamming that became commonplace during that era.

By the time Incentive Licensing had been in effect for a year or two, AM had 
all but disappeared from the air.  The few of us who stayed on AM were 
harassed and heckled as could be expected for anyone who refuses to go along 
with the crowd, plus the SSB warriors thought they had won, and it was an 
extreme thorn in their side whenever they heard the few remaining AM 
stations on the air.

AM started coming back in the early 70's, only a few years after it 
supposedly had died, and now AM has been "coming back" for about 35 years, 
longer that it had ever been "dead" in the first place, and for almost as 
long as it was ever used by amateur radio operators before its 
officially-declared "death" in the late 60's.

So, some of the anti-AM crowd we hear to-day are old timers, veterans of the 
60's AM vs. SSB wars, although many of those are now SK, and others have 
mellowed out in their old age, some of whom have actually returned to AM..

But you are correct, most of the remaining disdain for AM that you witness 
to-day originally probably has its roots in the 11m crowd.

Don k4kyv

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