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Why All The Concern About "Swing?"

CollinsMan

CollinsMan

Supporting Member
Dec 19, 2006
130
23
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55
Florence Mississippi
Ever since I was a kid, I've noticed that most CBers are concerned about how much swing an amplifier or radio shows on a wattmeter. Why?

You never see an AM broadcast station doing 50 watts carrier and swinging 50,000 for example... Why not just figure out how much power a device (tube, transistor) can dissipate and divide by 4 - then run that many watts in carrier power? That is what I do, and I always get good comments on my audio whether it be on the ham bands or CB. (It drives CBers crazy that I don't swing on their meters, though!)

Does anyone know how and why the "swing idea" got started? Was it because the sweep tubes in the classic CB amps wouldn't handle much carrier?

Just curious...
 

It indicates your modulation. More swing, 'louder' audio on the receive end.

You can reach people two ways, with a strong carrier (more power as a broadcast station does) or with louder audio to cut through the noise (more modulation/swing).

The trouble is, to avoid splattering and being wider than you should be, your modulation should truly be limited as the radios were originally designed. Cut the 'swing' back and your audio quality generally will be cleaner as will the width of your transmission on the band.

I had a Uniden 520XL cut down to 2W unmodulated and about 12W peak if I recall. It was monstrously loud, but it was also a splatter box. You could hear that radio under a 100W carrier that had low audio output. You could also hear it a half a channel in either direction too.

Broadcast stations are carefully regulated for the width of their transmissions and for any spurious emissions. Thus they compress their content heavily and fit it juuuust as wide as they can and within the power they are licensed to use. If you ran one of those stations like a CB'er... it would be really some mess on the broadcast band.
 
Very basically, it's a matter of not knowing what that meter is telling you, and not understanding exactly what's going on, or why. After that, it's an attitude thing.
- 'Doc
 
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Heh, heh... good deal! It does look cool to watch the needle on the meter swing out with modulation and it is nice to be really loud! If that is what you like to do more power to you!

I used to have a JB 150 driving a JB 2000, and liked to key 20 and swing up to 1000 or so. Got the "worked all TV award" back in the '80s and sounded great. Now I'm a "Duck" according to 75 meter AM standards at 375 watts carrier.... go figure.

Just curious as to what started it all as none of the other AM mode users of the rf spectrum do the "swing thing" that I know of.
 
i dunno, man, the alc meter on my 101e, my icom, etc etc etc barely moves! and the bird just ticks a click past where its needle sets. and i get out just fine ;) . no need for swing here!
 
Hi Davegrantsr,

That's pretty much how I run my stuff, too. Never had any real complaints at all. Lots of folks I talk to on CB say "you sound as clear as a telephone call and I have you 30 over, but you ain't got no swing." I usually comment "but I do sound good, though?" To which they generally reply "yes, but you ain't got no swing." Strange thing that swing fixation...

I do understand using all that swing to impose on someone else's carrier. However, I'm not really into competition CBing, so I guess I'll leave that to the pros...
 
I guess then that is what started it...people enjoy stepping on other people.

Everywhere you look, people are stepping on each other, it don't matter where they are or what they are doing.

Even here, you can see everyone playing quien es mas macho?

I like it when someone comes in with a big fat key and lays down the silent treatment.
 
I do understand using all that swing to impose on someone else's carrier-but i have found that small carrier & big swing CAN be taken out by equal or less swing with bigger carrier.
being the BIGGEST is a tough chore. ever hear how angry clarence carter or painkiller, et al, get when THEY get keyed over? they don't like to 'play the game'. when you DO get keyed on, hey, it's time to go. even the '72 dolphins weren't untouchable forever.
 
Clarence Carter... Is that the same guy who came out with the song "Strokin?" :D Or, is that just his CB handle?

I was looking around on youtube the other day, and a guy in Great Brittain had posted a video where he heard Clarence Carter pretty well even though there didn't seem to be any skip conditions... That dude must run a TON of power!

I remember a guy who went by Prime Minister back in the 80s. He ran a Johnson Valiant transmitter driving some sort of big amp, and could throw a giant carrier. My needle could be pegged with skip, and he could "quiet" the channel. That was impressive! I haven't heard him since I got back into CB, though.

Once when I was in the military, we were working on a southern-oriented 31 MC troposcatter array up in Alaska. This was built before satellites, and was intended for use in case a nuclear event disrupted the ionosphere and knocked out HF communications. (These kinds of systems use extremely high power and very directional antennas to bounce the signal off of moisture in the atmosphere instead of the ionosphere, basically.)

The antenna was spec'd at 24 dBd, and was oriented toward the East Coast of the United States. It was mostly used for back-up data transmissions, but the exciter was capable of AM due to its having been built back in the 50s when military AM was still widely used.

One of the techs tuned the system down to channel 6 as best he could, and ran 75KW carrier for a few hours. Y'all should have heard the commotion! Yep, it wasn't legal - then again it wasn't me! 8)
 
linearone said:
AC5CH said:
Ever since I was a kid, I've noticed that most CBers are concerned about how much swing an amplifier or radio shows on a wattmeter. Why?

You never see an AM broadcast station doing 50 watts carrier and swinging 50,000 for example... Why not just figure out how much power a device (tube, transistor) can dissipate and divide by 4 - then run that many watts in carrier power? That is what I do, and I always get good comments on my audio whether it be on the ham bands or CB. (It drives CBers crazy that I don't swing on their meters, though!)

Does anyone know how and why the "swing idea" got started? Was it because the sweep tubes in the classic CB amps wouldn't handle much carrier?

Just curious...
Click to expand...


finally some one who understands my pain... I hate the magnum s9 1/4 watt dk 50 watt swing, I hear it all freakin day and night... I shudder
Click to expand...

yep and your going to hear it more and more..lol
its just freakie using that radio to drive a ts350 into a 5 pill to top off an 8 pill what swing :p
 
AC5CH,

prime minister is none other than hip hop star and big butt enthusiast, sir mix a lot.

yeah, he's got some money into his radios.
he also wrote a few songs about CB radio.
you can find them on the net somewhere.
later,
loosecannon
 
It has to do with the design/function/operation of the AM Detector section of your radio.

In "simple terms", after the front-end of the radio, the mixers and etc do their thing, a modulated signal is delivered to the AM detector.

Through the "Magic" of electronics (the same principle that decoded the information off of vinyl records) the amplitude and content of the waveform is decoded into intelligence that is fed into an amplifier circuit which produces voltage to drive the speaker coils and you here "sound".

The AM detector reacts to change ( Δ) in the amplitude and duration of the modulated signal; the Δ-Amplitude / Δ-Dead carrier is decoded into sound.

The bigger the ratio of change between Δ-A over Δ DC the louder the signal will be perceived in the receiving radio.

There are "Common Sense" principles to this Δ-A / Δ-DC concept; when your radio swings from 1 watt to 50 watts, you are taking the concept too far and are creating malicious interference that you don't have a clue about where it is popping up at.

Commercial AM Broadcast Stations do not have 'Dial-A-Watt" controls where they use a potentiometer to control the output of the station, they know that a properly modulated AM signal supplied by a capable B+ supply will modulate 100% and will measure 4 times the dead-key carrier power and fill a certain amount of RF band width.

Yes, you get good reports on your your signal in spite of the fact that it doesn't 'Swing-Monkey-Swing', this could be form any combination of Signal processing on the transmitting end or DSP somewhere in the receiving end of the circuit.

Regardless, CB Radios probably lack sophisticated DSP circuits of today so they must depend on the tried-and-true 1980's "hammer and chisel" method to de-code the intelligence from the signal. More change equals louder sounding broadcast.

.
 

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