That would depend heavily on conditions, 25 watts is not going to be sufficient to hold a "good qso" on a regular basis, to make contacts, yes...
short occasional contacts are a tad different then what I would consider a "good qso" Guess this all depends upon exactly what wants to be accomplished, but I gathered the OP was interested in partaking in those roundtables with those "Yahoos"
LOL, you must know a different bunch then I do....
Very few modern transceivers are capable of delivering an "excellent sounding signal" on AM, the 101 does a nice job though... You are right though the AM filter in the 101 is only active in RX, and then only after mods.
The audio quality/fidelity that a stock 101 is capable of producing, or any other modern amateur transceiver for that matter is not going to be better "any old tube transmitter ever could" on AM....
while a couple of the most recent Icom offerings are passable on AM, All modern HF transcievers are low-level AM modulation and simply sound like shit... I guess if your half deaf most of what you say could be considered fact. Guess it all boils down to what you consider passable quality, however they shouldn't have even bothered including AM transmit on 99%...
If the original OP is seriously interested in getting into AM I would suggest going on over to The AM Forum - Index, lots of good info, and even a Mod or two for a few modern rigs to improve the AM tx.
