[AMRadio] AM worldwide

[donroden at hiwaay.net]

Ahhhhh…… 15 and 10 meter AM in the 60s.  If you are old enough to have  
been  around during the AM/SSB "transition" era, it was a time when  
the big DXers were dumping their AM transmitters for the more  
efficient single sideband mode.

Newly licensed General Class operators could find really great AM  
transmitters on the used market, and more importantly, the rest of the  
world had easier access to AM transmitters than single sideband  
transmitters.

The stateside single sideband operators wanted to talk with other  
single sideband operators, and there was an abundance of foreign  
operators still using AM.  It wasn't uncommon to find the phone  
segments of 10 meters and 15 meters full of Eastern European and USSR  
operators.... willing to talk for long periods of time ( real  
conversations about their families/ towns/ asperations ) rather than  
the typical "CQ- you are 5x9-QRZ? " .

I wish everyone could hear just once, the warm, smooth audio quality  
coming out of a receiver like a Hammarlund HQ-170 and it's companion  
HUGE wide range speaker.   I'm not saying it's better... just  
different than the sounds coming out of the typical solid state  
shack-in-a-box that I currently have with a tiny two inch speaker..

As a teenager with a Heathkit DX-100 on 15 meter AM into a three  
element homebrew beam on a push-up mast, I had a blast on AM.

I have a Johnson six and two meter ( 6N2 ) transmitter that I hope to  
put on 50.400 to recreate my "Elmer's" rig that he used to work the  
world on six meters during Cycle 19.  Just have to wire up a modulator  
circuit.

Try all modes. That's what makes amateur radio so special.

Don W4DNR



Quoting w5jo at brightok.net:

> Charlie,
>
> It has been a while but there was activity in Australia.  The man I  
> talked to regularly is now SK, VK2BA (if my memory is not to bad).   
> He had a regular contact with a station in North Carolina who is  
> still around but I have not heard on AM in quite a while.  When  
> David was alive there were several operators in Australia that  
> operated AM.
>
> Currently there are a few hams in Europe that operate AM and  
> regularly post who they hear on our companion site AM Fone.  There  
> are stations in several countries including the UK, France and some  
> of the low countries.   I don't know about any other activity but  
> there may be some.
>
> Jim
> W5JO
>
> -----Original Message----- As a new ham, almost 50 years ago now,   
> being brave enough to put a DX60 on 20 meters and getting 'your  
> carrier is not nulled' reports in the era of rigs that had that  
> control on the front panel, like Swan, I worked the world on 10  
> meter AM.  Seemed there were plenty on the air when the band was  
> open. Australia and Nova Scotia contacts with my DX60 and homebrew 3  
> element 10 meter beam were common.  England seemed to have a  
> pipeline to my QTH, but perhaps the number of stations who reported  
> their antennas as Rhombics was the cause of that.  Learned more  
> about rhombics, single wire, multi wire, low vs high, terminated and  
> unterminated from G land than from any book.
>
> As I was reading a 1992 ER mag, one of the pics was of a Japanese  
> Hamfest and a note about AM activity back then in Japan.  That got  
> me to wondering if any of you know what level AM is pursued  
> currently  in the rest of the civilized world, or has it been banned  
> in some countries?  Do other places have active AM groups?
>
> Charlie, W4MEC in NC
>
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