[AMRadio] "Real" AM'er

[Rick Poole]

At 09:45 AM 11/28/2011, Kevin Raper wrote:

 >>>>>
>Anything less than a few Hundred Watts is a PW (Piss Weak) Station. 
>My Heathkit DX-60 is a PW Station while my Gates BC-500H is NOT a PW Station.
<<<<<

Oh, OK, well, I guess I'll be a PW station for the foreseeable 
future, with my DX-100B.  Considering building an amp, maybe even 
with a high-level modulator, but that'll be a while.

 >>>>>
>Many AM Stations do not have push to talk, but have to flip several 
>switches to go from Receive to Transmit, so they try to say as much 
>as they can between switch flips.
<<<<<

I remember the transition days in the '50's between AM and SSB... 
'scuse me, "Slop Bucket" :-)... when the ARRL and QST were trying 
hard to get people to take advantage of this new thing called VOX to 
cut down on the monologues and move to a quicker 
back-and-forth.  Even today, even on SSB, in a lot of cases seems 
like that effort had only limited effect.

But, "several switches"?  Seems kind of excessive, even back then.  I 
recall seeing a video clip on YouTube where someone was demonstrating 
his big monster AM station, might have been based on a broadcast 
transmitter, don't remember, but it had an R-390 receiver in front of 
the operator and the transmitter in back of the operator.  The 
operator had to switch the receiver, then reach over there to switch 
the antenna, then turn his chair around to reach over here to switch 
the transmitter, then the opposite sequence to go back to receive... 
really seemed like some of that could have been automated a bit...

Rick WA1RKT