[AMRadio] Usages of AM in the amateur context

[Donald R McMurray]

Hello everyone,

I am new to this group and amateur radio. I am 32 years old and have had some health problems the past few years.

I bought a Kenwood TS-930S in 2006. I hooked up a 12 awg wire approx 60' long and in some places up to 35' tall. It works a lot better than I thought it would. I run it straight down from the apex of the house. I run it through the window and close the window on it. It doesn't seem to hurt it because of the insulation on it. I run the 12 awg strait into the back of the radio with the help of a very short and small gauge nail so the wire will stay in place and make good contact. Of course, this is just a receiving antenna, if you could call it that. 

While I'm studying for my exams, my mentor suggested that it would be more motivating if I got a working station built to get used to listening and developing my ham shack ( but of course not transmitting until I'm licensed ). My favorite band while I've been doing all this listening on the bands in the 75-80 meter band. I almost have all the parts together to build a half-wave 75 meter dipole. I have studied our property and I know I can get it 50' high but I'm hoping for 60' which would be a 1/4 wave in height. I have other antennas in mind for the other HF bands.

Well... enough rambling. My question is, how effective is AM on the bands, what bands do you usually use, what time of day do you usually use them, and how do you know someone is calling CQ on a band that is predominately SSB?

I hope everyone will bare with me, as I am just trying to learn about full-wave AM ( I guess that is a term for AM since SSB AM is either the bottom or top of the AM wave, but please correct me if I'm using the wrong terminology).

I hope some of you might want to explain the standard of AM in amateur radio, versus SSB.

I hope to be licensed soon, so maybe I'll see you on the bands! 73's

Donald McMurray
Kingston, TN
mailto:donmcm63 at bellsouth.net