Ebay President Jackson!

[davegrantsr]

Yes but why would you buy an export rig to run AM only?

Because they THINK export=loud, like, ahem, galaxy. They dont understand the technical aspect of why a jackson sucks on ssb & is even suckier on AM. They see mrf 455 or whatever it was & say oooooh lookie at all the watts. 1 million watts with no modulation is just a dead key, the jackson is a slight step above 'cause its got some modulation. I listen to my locals brag about their H&Y ja's & they dont buy it when i tell, sorry, your old POS superstar was louder.....(;

 

[Shockwave]

They could have added a $1 transistor after the existing audio amp to form a series pass modulator. Instead they decided to ruin the AM and use one of the worst sounding low level modulators I've heard.

I haven't heard impressive low level AM modulation since the Yaesu 101 series. Here is a rig that uses under 100 milliwatts of audio to modulate the low level AM carrier oscillator and it sounds just as good as if they used 100 watts in a high level modulator.

The reasons are simple. They didn't try and reuse the side band balanced modulator for AM and the audio is applied after all the narrow band crystal filtering in the IF stage.

 

[Lil'Yeshua]

Sounds like they're trying to increase their profit margin. If I can buy an NOS vintage radio with better quality innards then I will. I just need to know which ones.

 

[Shockwave]

Yes but why would you buy an export rig to run AM only?

There are some good reasons for this. What type of AM only radio would you pick today? There were some good choices a while back that didn't mean giving up things like RF and mic gains, decent noise blanker and selectivity or a real meter rather than LED's. Now most AM radios are junk.

Additionally the SSB radio will have a much beefier final stage that in the right hands can provide more output than any AM only radio (even an old school 29LTD). Series pass modulators used in SSB radios can drive a much lower impedance than AM radios modulated directly off the audio chip. This modulator also has much more bandwidth than the transformer type used in non SSB rigs.

 

[w9cll]

I can see your points but I also see no value in running AM on 11 meters at all unless it's for nostalgia reasons. If everyone you are talking to is running exports then use FM. Problem is running ssb/FM you can't get the big audio that many like, and its hard to key up over someone too. Don't get me wrong I am not saying all 11 meter ops do this but in some general listening here lately I have heard nothing but over driven radios with big amps to talk 5 miles. Maybe in other parts of the country 11 is more civil but no here in Chicago.

I remember when I ran 11, talked mostly on the 37usb, 38lsb, 40lsb and when the band was open 27.605. I was a member of the Little Rascals group, Southern Great Lakes group, SSB INTL and others I don't remember anymore. I would gladly put an 11 meter rig back on the air if it was like it was but its not, at least here in Chicago.

 

[Shockwave]

It would have been nice if the class D band in the USA was orginally set up as FM like we see in the UK and other parts of Europe. That would virtually eliminate any RFI from being detected and rectified in consumer electronics.

There is no doubt SSB has it's advantages conserving bandwidth and cutting through the noise. But there is also the disadvantage of reduced fidelity and having to precisly match the frequency with all stations in the QSO. That has become harder to do wth all the drifting junk in this market today.

 

[hotrod]

I can see your points but I also see no value in running AM on 11 meters at all unless it's for nostalgia reasons. If everyone you are talking to is running exports then use FM. Problem is running ssb/FM you can't get the big audio that many like, and its hard to key up over someone too. Don't get me wrong I am not saying all 11 meter ops do this but in some general listening here lately I have heard nothing but over driven radios with big amps to talk 5 miles. Maybe in other parts of the country 11 is more civil but no here in Chicago.

I remember when I ran 11, talked mostly on the 37usb, 38lsb, 40lsb and when the band was open 27.605. I was a member of the Little Rascals group, Southern Great Lakes group, SSB INTL and others I don't remember anymore. I would gladly put an 11 meter rig back on the air if it was like it was but its not, at least here in Chicago.

i agree. i use mostly ssb on 11 meters. but sometimes we use fm too ,just for fun.