[AMRadio] Starting in AM

[Rob Atkinson]

Hi Dave, okay FB; You are sort of in the same boat I am in.   When I first
tried AM it was not very satisfying for two reasons.  I did not really run
enough power to have a good chance of having a QSO and my reception
techniques were not very good.    I suggest working on a pair of goals:
learning about radio and circuits and AM and making contacts.   The old
receivers (and I have one and enjoy it immensely) can be a bit tricky or
require practice when operating at night under tough conditions of QRM.
With AM you have a relatively wide passband.   There are times when a
passband of 5 KHz (pretty narrow for AM) can be nice to have.   I don't know
much about your transceiver, but JA rigs on AM often have a fairly narrow
passband, maybe 6 KHz.  I'd hang on to it because it might be useful when
conditions are poor.  You might want to tune around and practice copying AM
qsos.

My suggestions are partly because of your location in N. Utah.   Most of
your operating (on the low bands at least) will probably be at night for I
don't think there is a large AM population within a few hundred miles of you
that you can work in the daytime on 75 m. (but 40 m. may have
possibilities).   As the sunspot cycle continues there should be increasing
AM activity on 10 meters up around 29.0 too.

I'd also shoot for a method that gets you operating with at a minimum 100 w.
carrier.   I have a hunch if you go the low power route (DX60s, Johnson
Rangers etc.) you won't scare up much from your QTH and you'll wind up
getting frustrated and disappointed.   Most of the guys running those rigs
use them as exciters for linear amplifiers, or operate them in the daytime
from locations in the midwest or northeast where there are lots of AM hams.


Most important is putting up a pretty good antenna.   If you can put up a
center fed dipole 1/2 wave on 80 m. up 50 feet or higher that would be
great.

If you need material to read for a vintage electronics education, one of the
best texts I have found is the old Navy electronics manuals.  The two volume
Basic Electronics course (but you only need v. 1) known as NAVPERS 10087-C
is an absolutely first rate text that is carefully written to train the
young man coming in off the street with no electronics knowledge and turn
him into a pretty knowledgeable repair tech.  You can see the table of
contents here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=o6pn1Pdas1UC&pg=PP7&dq=navpers+10087-c
and there are several used copies available at http://www.abebooks.com just
enter basic electronics navpers 10087 in the title blank.

I agree, there is nothing like hot tubes and warm analog audio!

73

rob
k5uj


On Sun, Jan 30, 2011 at 6:52 PM, David Rhodes <der3113 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Correction:  My uncle was K6PRF
>
>