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ABSOLUTELY BEST HF ON AM
- Thread starter Sonar
- Start date
Unless it has tubes in it none of them were designed with AM operation in mind. AM is all but dead compared to the other voice modes and hams are not into being loud and proud on AM anyway. If it is distortion free and has half decent frequency response it is acceptable to 99%. The other 1 % build their own AM transmitters or rebuild old commercial stuff.
Well yeah I wasn't thinking about the SDR stuff. I was thinking hardware not software. Most of the SDR stuff can sound pretty good on AM.
It depends on the operator's skill level and preferences. My ts-440 sounds great on AM. Feed the balanced modulator with external gear and install a wider 455khz filter. Then pipe the signal from that filter to a cheap sdr for high class receive. Out of the box that radio sounds horrible on AM. Tube rigs are cool but aren't the only way.
If you want plug and play look at the Apache labs SDR. They are nice radios. You won't find as much AM activity as ssb but it's not completely dead here. There are some old buzzards on 3890 and 7160 here daily. Occasionally you'll catch AM on 20, 15 and 10 meters.
If you get the Anan get the 100 watt model. It costs more but with the 15 dB gain rule you'll have to build your own amp or driver because you can't buy one that I'm aware of.
If you want plug and play look at the Apache labs SDR. They are nice radios. You won't find as much AM activity as ssb but it's not completely dead here. There are some old buzzards on 3890 and 7160 here daily. Occasionally you'll catch AM on 20, 15 and 10 meters.
If you get the Anan get the 100 watt model. It costs more but with the 15 dB gain rule you'll have to build your own amp or driver because you can't buy one that I'm aware of.
Well with enough mods and outboard gear any rig an be made to sound great but realistically speaking I believe the OP was asking about out-of-the-box performance. My FT-857D sounds pretty good on AM as well but I had to make some changes to the service menu settings regarding power output and ALC settings as well as reset the bias which was off considerably.
Those Anons and class E transmitters are the best I've heard on AM
I know but that takes the fun out of it. I suppose were all in it for different reasons. Then there's the different opinions of how much bandwidth you need to sound good and what good is. We all have different tastes. I'm just glad the guy has an interest in AM.
The AM tube rigs you mentioned can use a little help to sound good and take more work to get there than a solid state rig. That's just my opinion and some people are satisfied with how they sound stock. For plug and play the Anan gets my vote. It will also work on 11 meters out of the box. That can't be said for flex.
Usually when a CBer asks what HF rig sounds good on AM he is wanting to run it on 11m and 11m only. A few grand for a rig and some technical expertise required to bring it to spec is usually not part of the equation. Hi-Fi aside most tube rigs actually had AM in mind since it was still a common mode when they were made. Even the taesu FT-101 series sounds decent on AM and it is about the last of the tube final rigs. My Heath DX-60B sounds great but I do use a Sennheiser MD-421 microphone with an outboard Urei EQ and an SP-1 speech processor module but even without that it sounds better than today's rice boxes. I just wish I had more power for it. Got a plan for that too but it will take some time to put together working around all the other things going on in life.
My new Icom IC-7300 seems pretty good on AM transmit! My near by HAM radio friend agrees with that statement. It is marginally better than most of my other transceivers. Probably due to the DUC/DDC design and that may put it into the realm of an SDR type rig.
Now on the other hand my 1974 Yaesu FT101EE does darn well on AM! It was designed with this mode in mind. Sort of the thought of the old days of HAM radio.
I have good audio reports with my Maxlog M-8900 but then I wonder what they use to hear me on!
73 Rod KB8DNS
Now on the other hand my 1974 Yaesu FT101EE does darn well on AM! It was designed with this mode in mind. Sort of the thought of the old days of HAM radio.
I have good audio reports with my Maxlog M-8900 but then I wonder what they use to hear me on!
73 Rod KB8DNS
My first foray into the midfi Hifi thing was worth it. I learned there's no such thing. Hi-fi (HIGH fidelity) is as you know was and is a reference that should only be used when one is equating it to FM.
I'm done with the phoney Hifi AM search as I know it's not possible. Widebanding on AM isn't Hifi and never will be.
I've an ft 950 and ts 450 for backup. Both to be used on ssb (11 meters). My AM rig will always be a sonar fs 2340. And honestly i wouldn't trade it for any direct injected wideband cb radio ever.
I might restore the old ef Johnson ranger and put the sonar A-side for a bit. In all honesty I don't understand why the companies that build hf's even bother wasting space on a transceiver that transmitts on AM with usually poor results at best. Hf's were obviously designed for cw, ssb ect ect with little thought to AM audio.
I'm so over the way those wideband cbs and the odd way they sound. At first I thought they were the best thing since sliced bread but don't anymore. I've actually come to dislike the audio those rigs produce.