Don't take this the wrong way, I love AM mode when its done right. Loud, clear booming audio weather it be scanning the air band. talking on the CB with a station out in the Mohave to listening on a vintage tube radio to an AM broadcast station. A strong signal with the right hardware can almost match FM, except it being mono it can maybe even beat it for fidelity over a wide range of amplitude. But any AM radio I have seen made since the 70s or early 80s sucked. FM can deliver decent quality audio from a single chip. To do the same with AM requires a pile of circuitry, and that becomes costly. On our CB radios some stations get it right, but most sound like twangy overmodulated, distortedm booming loud crap. And even though AM is fun for quasi ham DX or local nets, to use the CB to get anything done its worthless. It is true that AM is intelligible at a lower signal level than FM, but you just about have to turn the squelch off to hear it. It might work on the VHF airband but not the upper end of HF. With FM you can run CTCSS / DCS coded squelch. Shuts all the people using AM, all the splattering truckers, all the superhetrodyne noise, the leaky CATV, the traffic lights, shuts em all up. Now folks can actually use the citizens band for it's original purpose. I have used this setup for years and it works. If you are in range of my base or my truck I will hear you, I dont have to turn the squelch up going through town and from base to mobile no amp I can easily talk 30 miles. I could do the same with AM, maybe a few more miles range, but with the squelch open blaring noise.
