[AMRadio] AM Radio

[John Tate]

A couple of years ago, I would get on the air with my modified DX-60 driving my SB-200 and attempt to QSO from Louisiana to NJ with WA3JBT and others. The "others" were much closer than Frank in NJ and I could usually do okay with them but with Frank, his reception of me was very very hit and miss, always at the edge of the noise level and some mornings were better than others but rarely could we carry on a good QSO. It was extremely frustrating to have one station in the regular group not able to copy me. This was 100 watts and I always loaded my DX-60 heavy so the "controlled carrier" aspect was rarely seen, in fact my 100 watt carrier would produce just a tad over 400 watts PEP. 

 Enter the Henry 2K4 amplifier with a pair of 3-500Z's. When I put the exact same station except now the carrier was 300 watts and the peaks were a tad over 1200 watts... I became armchair copy to Frank and the others also replied with "wow" much better!! Yes I did switch between the two and it was like night and day to everyone out there on 3.885 AM during springtime early mornings. 

 Now I had become a welcome member of the roundtable because everyone could copy me without straining. It was a big difference and I felt comfortable now in the roundtable. So yes, there you go, same antenna (inv vee) same modulation level, same time, same freq response, same microphone same everything but the power level and much better results.


 Now that is not to say that the 100 watts didn't get me into plenty of roundtables without any problem, but in this case where the farthest regular station was really having problems with me, the difference really was desirable.

----- Original Message -----
From: Bernie Doran
Sent: 01/25/12 08:25 AM
To: Discussion of AM Radio in the Amateur Service
Subject: Re: [AMRadio] AM Radio

 same antenna? same modulation level? same time- switching between the two in seconds? same frequency response? same microphone? same compression or limiting? everything has to be exactly the same except the power level. does it make a difference? of course. but a big difference? 1 DB is the minimum detectable change under the best of test conditions, so this is six steps of minimum detection changes.