[AMRadio] I'm finally back on CW

[Jay Bromley]

HI Don,
The biggest reason AM made a comeback was from guys like you, HLR Tim, and
Bill K7VZP helping guys like me along.  Every time I got on the air was a
learning experience!!  Also printed material like the AM Press, AM
connection, etc also help grow that end of the hobby.  Hard to believe there
was a time before internet.     

I can't thank you guys enough!!

73 de w5jay/jay..


Don wrote>>>  You just got in on the tail-end. The last major surge of ham
radio operators are now in their 60s, a few years younger than I am. I had
about given up ham radio as a  lost  cause just before I moved up to New
England following years of living abroad. This was in about 1973. AM had all
but disappeared from the ham bands following the incentive licensing
debacle, and so had homebrew rigs heard on the air. So much for Incentive
Licensing reversing the trend away from technical knowledge and skills in
the amateur community, which was its purported purpose. 
But I digress - that's another topic for another discussion...  Upon my
return from overseas, I got back on the air with my homebrew AM KW, and
could probably count the total number of regular AMers I could work on
75 on one hand. One of those was Hoisy, W4CJL of S.P.A.M. fame. But other
than a sporadic few, no AM was to heard anywhere on any of the bands, except
perhaps on 160, because most of the SSB rigs of that era were "all-band, 80
thru 10m" so a lot of top bands ops still used AM.

I moved up to Cambridge, MA and sort of forgot about ham radio, figuring it
had gone 100% the slopbucket appliance route, which didn't interest me at
all. Then, a year or so after I  had moved up there, I ran across a 1935 HRO
receiver identical to the one I had been using back here,  in a junk shop
for $50. I bought it and took it back to the apartment and thought it would
be neat to do some SWLing and maybe listen to some foreign  broadcasts. Then
one day, I tuned across 75 and heard some strapping AM signals. Even more
surprisingly, these weren't old buzzards past  retirement age, but young
guys, some in university and others still in high school! I started
listening regularly and became familiar with Timmy, Chuck, PW, Deano,
Richaroni and the  rest of the "mob". That rekindled my interest in ham
radio. I picked up a copy of CQ magazine at a news kiosk, and thumbing
through it, I found an announcement of a Sunday afternoon auction in Sharon,
MA. I went, and many of those guys were there, and I got acquainted with
them in person. Shortly afterwards, there was a national ARRL convention in
Hyannis, MA. I attended that; they had a very nice outdoor tailgating flea
market, just like Dayton although smaller. I found some more  goodies and
ran into more of the "mob". We rented a suite of hotel  rooms at a local
motel and had a big party after the hamfest that lasted till the wee hours. 
That's where I first met Tim and Cathy. The next spring I drove down to
Dayton, and while there picked up a Ranger and got it on the air, using the
HRO receiver.

That was about the time when AM started its "come-back". From then on, the
number of AM stations heard on the air began to increase, and it spread from
the northeast over the rest of the country, where small pockets of AM
activity had persisted in 5-land and on the west coast. 
Not too long after that, I built the homebrew 8005 modulated by 805s rig,
and used the Ranger to drive it. The antenna was an end-fed zepp, strung
from the chimney of the apt building where I lived, across Western Ave. in
Cambridge, to a tree across the street. The rest is history.

Those guys, who were mostly in their late teens and early 20s in the mid 70s
were the last wave of young people showing up on the HF ham bands. 
Of course, there were a few older ones too, like Joe W2WAS on L.I., who
weren't stuffed shirts.  But as time went by,  the same group of people
remained the youngest hams. There wasn't another wave of younger blood
following them. Yes, there has been a sprinkling of newcomers here and
there, but for the most part, the Baby Boomer generation was the last
generation of life long hams and a major part of the AM community as well.
We still have small steady trickle of new upcoming AMers, but I'm afraid
that when my generation passes, the AM community will become very sparse.
Unfortunately,  the same can be said about the amateur radio community as a
whole. Probably the only thing that will save the hobby is the increasing
unimportance of the HF spectrum, if we can just keep it from being totally
drowned in hash and garbage from power lines and radiation from  consumer
electronics junk.


Don k4kyv





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