The AM Forum

Got the dipole repaired today...Will be listening / CQ ing on 1885 much of this evening.

bill 1700 MSTWednesday

It's busy here now Bill. I'll be listening for you on and off this evening.

We need to expand our horizons.

There was a QSO on 85 that I could not copy and one on 80 with a couple of windbags that seemed to have to key down before the other person stopped talking.

I moved down to 70 and ran the robot for 30 mins without a bite.

This is a promo for SDR and the panadapter window.  If you sit staring at your speaker, parked on 85 or anywhere else for that matter, you have no way of knowing what else is going on.

With my $50 soft rock I can see every QSO from 1830 to 1900.  When I new carrier pops up, I jump over to see what's up.  If he is calling CQ, I pounce, if not, I go back to calling CQ.

I can't believe the love affairs with old boat anchor receivers.  They are fun to look at and play with maybe but SDR and panadapter is today's real receiver.

js

Heeey Jack let's not forget anything above 1900 too!
Everybody gets stuck around 1880 something.
And yes, the Panadapter shows how busy it can get. It's nice to shift the I.F. around and BW and to make the QSO sound like Hi-Fi\

Fred

A dead-air slopbucket group has been showing up just above 1885 lately. They are aware when there is AM activity, making a point to mention that they must be bothering the AM'ers a lot more than the AM'ers are bothering them. I put it in the category of a dead-air group because sometimes they go for 5-10 minutes without anyone saying anything, broken by occasional one or two-word comments, then another 5-10 minutes of silence.  But as soon as AM activity starts up on '85, the whole gang suddenly becomes active.

Another AM group meets regularly on 1880 in the evening, but it usually expands to too large a roundtable to suit me.  I have been slipping up to 1886 or 87 to leave a bit more breathing room.  5 kHz is not enough separation between two AM QSO's.

AM activity can be heard most evenings on 1985 or thereabouts.

Makes you wonder what they are doing in between the "uhhh's" and "yepps". Reminds me of the party line when I was a kid. The kid down the creek would be on the phone with his buddy, both  watching TV and most of it was dead air time.....You might think I was listening in or something.

I heard those guys on 1888 tonight.  Jack, what's a Panadapter?  Was that made by Lakeshore Industries?  What's the filament voltage?  ;D

I bought 4 softrocks for $48.

I wonder which model you bought?

That puts you smack dab in the middle of the buckets with no possibility of filtering them out.

I spent another half hour after 9 with the robot on 75 with no joy.  You were just signing off when I gave up.  I was "watching" your QSO.

js

That seems to be the name of the panoramic view of the current SDR receivers.  I know little about the namesake other than that only a collector of radio memorabilia could find it useful.

For those who have never seen this, I have attached a screen shot of your signal from last night.  This is the view in PwSDR using a $50 Soft Rock.  Why anyone would want to stare at the speaker of a buzzardly old boat anchor when they could look at this with even a $15 Softrock is one of the mysteries of ham radio.

N.B.  It is also obvious looking at this what Don has in mind when suggesting that AM stations 5kc apart are QRMing each other.  Translate:  they are as rude as slop buckets.

js

Some of the older receivers won't select out QSO's 5kc away.  I know that my SX28 won't.  We should decide on either 1880 or 1885 as a calling frequency and stick with it.  Or else-  a 7 or 8 kc separation should work much better.
As for the slopbuckets, they will get the message.   We have more staying power than they do.
73
Steve WA2DTW

Last night was VERY busy. And Bill, HG, you were doing very nice into Western Pa but the highway was very busy. I couldn't get my K9AY loop to focus on the direction of your signal. The busyness was from ops closer to me, I guess.
We had a nice QSO with AL W1UX and K4KYV, Don. I even had a 120hz noise on my carrier. Don thought it was a PS in his RX, But I quickly unkeyed and saw a little carrier disappear. So it was the typical brain dead activity of a fellow Ham.

The Panadapter on the Soft rock and Flex is pretty nice. I can tailor my RX and TX bandwidth so I always hear armchair copy and I'm not sssssssssss and hhhhhhhhhh ing a close by QSO. Still have to abide by 6-10 kc separation, though.

Keep sleeping Mr Sun, we're having fun on the low bands.

Fred

Hi Don and all:

One of the QSY issues here and elsewhere is antenna bandwidth on 160.

I use a full-sized fan dipole with the ends spread 3 feet, and it covers only 50 to 75 KHz with a safe VSWR for full power operation. I don't want to use a tuner in the shack and run high power into a long mismatched feedline.  My antenna is resonant around 1850, 1915 is at the high edge. 1985 KHz is out of the question unless I shorten it up a few feet.

I did have a good AM QSO with K5UJ in Illinois last evening on 1890 KHz, I just don't hear a lot of the PW SSB activity around 1885 from the east coast that you guys do. Any tall ship running QRO AM does the job here.

Conditions on 160 are exceptional, it sounds and works like 75 this winter. Even solid copy on a lot of 50 KW AM BCB from out east almost every evening.

Got a full house for Thanksgiving dinner and the Denver Donkeys play football this evening, so won't likely be on tonight.

Does this imply that I heard the Mop last night and didn't know it?

What is the big secret about your call sign?

Posting regularly to a ham group without a call sign seems a bit strange.

But then there was that guy who only wants to talk to his friends so ... what do I know?

js

The problem was in my receiver.  One of the 40 mfd sections of the filter cap in the 75A-4 apparently opened.

That was a brand new replacement cap that I installed just 2-3 years ago, supposedly built by another manufacturer to original specifications, using manufacturing equipment they acquired from the Mallory factory.

I think I'll repair it for now by diverting the section that serves as a decoupling cap for the product detector over to the main filtering section, and wire in a smaller cap  with pigtail leads to take care of the decoupling function.

Probably would have done better if I had used an old electrolytic from the junkbox, salvaged from some piece of parted out equipment.  I  recall paying over $40 for that exact  replacement 3-section cap, and thought it would last for ever since its voltage rating is 100 volts higher than the original.

it's flintstone MOP Jack :o
I try to get on and I'm trying to do it more often. It's the family duties and after 10P my mind is mush and I dont want to deal with crowded band condx.
Were you a secret listener....you shudda jumped in.

Fred

it's flintstone MOP Jack :o
I try to get on and I'm trying to do it more often. It's the family duties and after 10P my mind is mush and I dont want to deal with crowded band condx.
Were you a secret listener....you shudda jumped in.
[/quote]

First of all there was that slop bucket knocking out half of the AM transmissions so it was sort of unplesant but I was keeping my eye on youse guys while calling CQ on 1875.  I did hear Don mention "Fred" but of course, unless he said "back to you Flintstone Mop", how would I know that he was talking to you.

You still evaded telling us your call sign.  The secret seems to be your identity.
js

I took about a minute to find it out here and QRZ.

Why he didn't mention it, I don't know. We'll leave that to him to answer....

But, he said  "MOP"

So I assumed that to be the suffix....

Go to his profile, it says where he lives....

Go to QRZ, type in the town's zip code....

Look for "MOP".

The mystery is solved.......KC4MOP MOP radio.....MOPMAN, etc etc

Fred

Update for 1885 tonight and even 3880 SAT 9PM.
The party must have been earlier. Very weak sigs.
Don, K4KYV sounds like he moved to the tip of S. America.

Fred

I didn't have any trouble tonight talking with Phil K2PG while he was down in West Creek, NJ. The band was relatively quiet and conditions were nice. No sloppbucket activity to drag you down.

Last night (Saturday PM) Rob K5UJ and I had about a 2½-hour marathon one-on-one on 1885.  A couple of times there were some QSB dips but most of the time arm-chair copy. At one point someone dropped jamming noises on frequency and about 2 minutes later a slopbucket QSO tried to start up couple of kHz above our carrier frequency, but Rob and I each enjoyed perfect copy and simply ignored the garbage.  The usual 1880 kHz AM group was also in progress, with little or no mutual interference as far as I could tell.  I did finally move up about a kHz higher to increase separation and switched in my 3400~ brick-wall lowpass audio filter, to increase the probability that both AM QSO's would continue to peacefully coexist.

What is great about the synchronous detector is the degree of transparency it gives to incidental noise and QRM, kind of like when you carry on a conversation at a sidewalk café with street traffic noise in the background.  The noise is there, but you can tune it out by ear and listen to the other person's voice, understanding him or her perfectly.

The way this works is that with a conventional envelope detector like the standard diode circuit, every element of noise and interference within the receiver passband intermodulates with every element of the desired signal, including both of the sidebands and the carrier. Thus the noise/QRM could be described as opaque since it blots out portions or all of the desired signal as well as competing with it.  But with the synch detector, the synchronised BFO demodulates the two sidebands while the AM station's transmitted carrier merely serves as a reference for the BFO to lock onto.  The noise and QRM beat with the local BFO so the noise is still there, but the noise and QRM do not intermodulate with the sidebands of the desired signal, allowing the sideband information to come out of the coherent detection process unaltered.  Therefore the interference still competes with the desired signal but without destroying it, so it becomes a matter of focusing one's attention on the desired signal information while ignoring the noise, kinda like listening to a person talk to you at the café while a bus is passing by in the street.

I was dying to get a dipole/vertical comparison from you but having spent the previous 2 hours with Rob and ECK, I thought I had better stay away and fired up on 1875.  You were lucky there were only 2 of you.  The three of us made 2 transmissions ea in 2 hours.

I re-made my dipole with copper wire which preliminary tests seem like a 10 db improvement.  You are about the only one hearing my vertical better than the dipole so it will be interesting to see if this still holds.

Big problem with the copper is that it is much heavier than the steel fence wire and without risking pulling down the trees, I can only get it up about 30 feet.  The steel would go to 45 with much less tension.

js

WB9ECK and I tend to get long winded in our afternoon visits  ;D 

Don, I have to get one of those Sherwood sync detectors to go with my 75A3 one of these days.  I just hope Rob keeps making them.  One of the problems with little ham equipment manufacturers is that they sometimes pop up and make a really useful and cool product but suddenly disappear and if their gear is any good it never shows up on the used market.  I read the Sherwood review in ER and it sounds like a must have.

The yaesu rig has what is claimed to be an AM sync. detector but it isn't any good.   It only works well with a very strong signal, but if you have a very strong signal you don't really need it. 

This morning I had 20 dB over 9 noise on 75.   I went out hunting and the culprit seems to be one or more problems on power poles on a street about 3 blocks east of my QTH.  I'll call that in tomorrow and see what happens.

Jack, yes the copper wire is pretty heavy for long spans.  I use the soft no. 12 stranded insulated house wiring here but my longest spans are only about 40 feet because I have a feedpoint support to maintain a minimal average dipole height.  I would never use that wire for something like an 80 m. dipole with only the ends supported.  Besides the weight and tension, it will stretch.  If you have a span over 50 feet I would use hard drawn copper wire.  I think you can get it from Wireman,
RadioWorks, Cablexperts...the usual suspects.   I had some but used it all up earlier this week helping a friend make a 130 foot dipole down in Indianapolis. 

73

Rob

Well, the price was right and I couldn't resist the convenience of the Local ACE next to the food store where Marilyn was shopping. $19 for a nearly full 500 ft reel.

I don't think stretch is much of an issue because that is what they do to soft copper to make it hard drawn.

I will just wait of few weeks and trim it if necesary.

js

Don and Rob, I heard you fellers last night but I didn't stick around. I heard the dead-air group attempting to put a kybosh on you without success. Then there was the bonesauce with the electronic keyer who was so zero beat (and dead beat), that he didn't even emit a tone when he was keying.  :D

Mike, don strapped them so much here that I was mostly unaware of them.  I fact I could run the audio feed to a speaker with the main rx on 20 KHz passband and the sub rx narrow and get Don dominating the wide passband.  By around 9 p.m. local, the band was starting to lenghthen out so things were getting a bit QSBish but the ghost group didn't have a chance.  I didn't even know about the cw guy.   the sync. detector at Don's end helped him copying me.  It was one of those times I wish I had been running a Gates rig or T368.

Rob

..bill...herd you calling cq, on 1885@8pm est, sunday nite...i called, but someone else had called you, and carried-on...i fired up on 1880, and werked kc4mop, kd8cvy...gud condx on sunday nite...

..sk..

I was out of the house yesterday (Sunday) evening.  Returned home about 8 PM and listened on the band.  Those same slopbuckets were well established on 1888, with a large group from 9- and 4-land.  I listened to them for a few minutes, and it sounds like they have chosen 1888 to be their regular squatting frequency and are making plans to meet there every night. They are aware of the nearby AM activity; I heard one mention that AM'ers have been using 1885 for decades. The main instigators appear to be from the Indianapolis area.

If we don't maintain more AM presence on '85 on a regular basis with some strapping signals into the midwest, I'm afraid this is about to go the way 3878 did 10-15 years ago with the Wally and Richard crowd. From what I have heard the past few nights, the frequency needs to be firmly in AM hands by 6 PM CST /7 PM EST / 0000 GMT.

Recently, I have been working up a little higher, about 1886-1887 to maintain wider separation from the nightly AM QSO on 1880, but I am aware that some of the 1885 regulars are rock-bound.

Use it or lose it!

Generally the OH AMers, Ken K8TV, Jim N8ULN, etal used to establish operations at 1888 early in the evening. They would be off by about 8PM. When I was on 1885 the other night, I heard some 'donald duck' but the station I was on with came over top of it. I don't pay them no mind. If they bitch about me, let em whine. I'll just offer them a little bit cheese.  ;)

OK Don.

Ready to strap this evening?

A better alternative may be to build or buy a VFO and move.  Being rock bound is a very lame excuse for tolerating or causing QRM.

Whatever their reason for squatting on 88, their intention is obvious and we can not win that war.  SSB is popular because it is loud.  Sound clips from icons aside, buckets can always be   heard over, under or around AMers.  They can not be driven away if they can hear each other.

AM can be pulled out with brick wall filters and listening to the USB but they seem to know this and have chosen 88 to make 85 unusable.

I just do not understand this parking on a frequency mentality.  On 75 it is almost officially understood that 3885 is the AM calling freq and you can bitch at buckets with some small feeling of justice.

On 160, this is not the case and it is a free for all  but with the additional advantage that we can go anywhere with AM... the whole bloody band.

The neighborhood of 1870 and down is much more friendly but I can call CQ endlessly and none of the parkers think to tune around.  The only people I talk to down there are friends who know I do this or the occasional bucket who doesn't know what AM is.

My suggestion is: Use it... All of it!

js

Come on up to 1945 (pacific NW) or 1925 (Calif)    Not too much interference...Evenings around 7-8 PM West coast time....

I'll be there.  The only problem is we usually eat dinner here starting some time between 7 and 8:30 PM, so don't expect me to be able hold the fort all alone for  the entire evening.


I don't have any problem with a SSB group starting up on 1885 or any other "AM frequency" for that matter, if no-one is using it when they first convene.  They were there first, they beat us to the draw, so I won't intentionally try to QRM them. But it is another matter when we have already well established an AM QSO sometimes for an hour or more, and a bunch of jerks fire up right on frequency or perhaps 2 kHz away with the expressed intent of driving us away, then proceed to gripe, piss and moan about all the QRM from the AM.  If I can still hear the other station and he can hear me, I won't tuck my tail and run, come hell or high water. I won't even acknowledge over the air the existence of the QRM.

Usually it is one or two ringleaders who initiate these tactics, and after they have successfully driven the AM'ers away, their pissweak buddies, the ones who operate 160m with the 80m dipole feeders tied together working against a ground rod or water pipe, join the group.  As long as we stand our ground, the big guns might be able to talk to each other, but their buddies won't get through.  A good AM receiver is usually all that is needed.

One of the reasons the Ghetto on 75 has become so chaotic is that too many AM'ers wimped out as soon as slopbuckets deliberately squatted on frequencies near the usual AM operating territory.  First it was 3878, then other slopbucket groups claimed ownership of 3892, 3875 and 3870, and now it is reduced to one or two old buzzard style AM roundtables jammed into a 10 to 12 kHz wide sliver, each with 8 or more stations taking turns making lengthy monologues.  I  can't understand why AM operators are so afraid to operate "outside the window" in the General class sub-subband on 75.

AM-slopbucket battles are most often the result of jerks like these; they are the ones who display the "parking on a frequency" mentality, usually to talk to the same 4 or 5 guys about the same trivia, night after night, on the same frequency.

Jack, I agree that we should be willing to use all the band (on 75 as well as 160), not just one or two frequencies.  To say we have priority over everybody else within some ill-defined "AM window" is to display exactly the same attitude as the dead-air SSB groups.  But OTOH, absolutely the worst thing we could do would be to start avoiding long-used AM frequencies like 1885 and look for another spot to operate just because we are afraid some bunch of bone-heads will show up after a while and run us off.  

Use it or lose it.  Strap softly and turn up the wick!

The band opens op around 4:30 MT,,6:30 ET here, Don, so I'll light the filaments around 7-8 PM eastern.

Would being in a wideband mode with hi-fi audio discourage bucket interference? Would the splashing audio keep them away?
Or brute force power?

Fred

I would say brute force power on your own operating frequency.  No need to trash up the band with extra wide sidebands while others are trying to use the band, for example the AM QSO on 1880.  When the jerks deliberately plop down 2-3 kHz above the AM carrier and operate LSB, the USB of the AM signal overlaps with their entire SSB signal.  They know that.  

No need to widen your sidebands.

 

Jack, a couple of points:  I, and maybe others, operate with a feedpoint tuner that, when tuned to a frequency, lets me move 5 to 10 KHz up or down; that's about it.  I can always go out and retune it, but it is a pain to do that at night in the winter.  I freely admit that is my problem--I need to motorize it or tune in the shack (which I hate to do).  Motorizing it is a project for next year. 

More important, to me moving around is letting the tail wag the dog.   Sure, we can go somewhere else, but eventually there will be another problem either with more SSB deliberate QRM or far enough down, complaints from the CW dx chasers.  I do not see why I should frequency hop every time a slopbucket pops up.  I feel like if I got 1880, 85 or 90 first then they have a problem, not me.   Incidentally, they are most likely running one of those panadapter rigs or at least, a plastic radio like mine with a VFO and maybe a s.s. amp.  They can probably QSY much more easily than most AM stations can.

Rob

I've been hearing 1885 activity out here in Puget Sound.  Only a couple of the stations have been strong enough for 100% copy (Don) and my 250 watt xmitter lacks the scrote to make it that far east.  Also heard the 1915 group for the first time this year last night.  When conditions are good I can work the Dakotas.  Like KL7OF said, 'lots of activity over here on 1925 and 1945'.  

woc

I did not suggest anything like that.  I am simply pointing out that when a couple of morons decide to squat a few KC above your favorite freq, there is little point in calling CQ on your favorite frequency.  If they do it after you have established a QSO than it is simply a matter of whether or not you can continue your QSO under fire.  If so, fine but if not, there is little honor or even fun to be gained slugging it out.

BTW, I should qualify the "morons" use.  They are only such if they do it simply to harass someone else.  If they just happen to be there, the person trying to start a QSO too close to them because it's an "Am freq" is the moron.

js

Last evening (Monday PM) I talked a long while with Bill KD0HG.  We were on about 1886.5 to give the QSO on 1880 a little more elbow room.  Then Jack, K9ACT called in.  After Jack and Bill signed out, I got a call from Rex, K4JBJ near Atlanta, whom I had not heard from in a long time.  Like Bill and Jack, he had a very good AM signal.

At 0225 GMT (8:25 pm CST) the jammer came on, with a very loud wide buzzsaw sounding signal that completely obliterated both sidebands of Rex's signal.  Rex was signing out anyway, so I put on a recorded test and let it run for about 5 minutes while I went into the house to check on something.  When I returned, the slopbuckets had started up on 1888, griping bitterly about all the AM QRM from below.  There was still plenty of empty space on the band nearby, but they insisted on starting up 1.5 kHz above the AM carrier, and then proceeded to piss and moan about the QRM.  I stayed on frequency and called CQ, and W0HRO from St. Louis came back.  We continued for quite a while.  The SSB QRM was there but we could still read each other through it, so we didn't QSY.

I didn't get any callsigns of the offending stations, but from listening round on the band after I signed out with Ken, it appears that they are from a slopbucket group that hangs out at 1898 kHz. 

I will try to get on there tonight.  I have been working a bit late to get caught up from being off last week.

The static will be up tonight.  There is a big storm blowing in over S. W. Texas bringing rain to central Texas and even a snow dusting in Las Cruces, NM and El Paso, TX.  That thing is headed East and the light showers are producing static crashes here at present.

You guys East of us, get ready for a pretty good winter storm.  High today in the South of OK has been in the low 50s, un-characteristic for this time of year.  So 160 is going to be noisy for a couple of days.

It won't snow  here.  We have been in a no-snow zone for years.  Thursday night they got several inches in Louisville and Memphis, but it was warm and sunny here and I was able to get some much needed work done outside .  Snow always seems to go a little to the north or to the south of here.  We got only a couple of light dustings last winter.  Years ago, we could expect 3 to 5 good snows of several inches each in a typical winter.  Now, we just get the QRN from other people's winter storms. 

Last year, we got a big ice storm. I'd rather see 10 feet of snow than one inch of ice.  It doesn't take much to damage trees and tear down antennas.  It took me all spring to clean up after the storm.  When it hit, I had to repair my beverage at least 5 times.  Tree limbs kept breaking and falling on it, and finally two big trees.  As soon as I thought all was clear and put away the chain saw, more wood would come tumbling down.

Rob, you ought to do a tutorial to some of the other guys in your area on how to strap on 160 from a postage-stamp size city lot.

I'll try to get on 1885 to-night if the QRN isn't too bad.  My beverage, which is directional to the north, combined with the sync detector should help a lot if the storms are in the southwest.

I was on 1885 for a while, and the QRN was intense.  I was still able to read everyone OK, thanks to the beverage/sync detector combination, but my ears felt the punishment.

I checked the frequency later in the evening, and Rob was still in there with some other stations, with about the same receiving conditions.  I didn't hear any jamming or slopbucket interference on the frequency the whole evening.

Despite the claim I heard one of the slopbucketeers say, that the AM interference wasn't bothering anyone, if a little lightning static kept them away, they must have a hell of time coping with the AM signal's USB if they choose to operate that close to the carrier frequency.  Makes it even more obvious what their motives really are.

Don this made my month; maybe my year but I think 80% of it is your sync. detector and beverage.  Over to the east, I'm much more pw.

Speaking of strapping, even with all the QRN  s9+20 dB here, ur carrier almost entirely blanked it all out. 

I worked N9MS locally later on and told him the lack of QRM due to the noise was kind of like how up here, when it's snowing on a weekend, it can be a good time to drive around because there is so little traffic--most folks stay home so those who do venture out find the streets almost empty.  As I told Fred, it was a night for either big iron or local QSOs.

Yes, I'll take almost anything over wind and ice.  Enough of those two and even a commercial tower will come down.

73
Rob
K5UJ

I identified one of the jammers this evening, the one who drops the buzzsaw tone on frequency.  His call is W9BE. He said he didn't hear anyone using the frequency, and that he couldn't be deliberately interfering because he fired up on 1888, 3 kHz away from the AM'ers. He went on to say that he didn't care if his signal was QRM'ing an AM QSO.

I heard them chatting on 1888 and I'm guessing that it's the increasing number of A.M. that's crowding them.
One said that he has an old A.M. unit he uses when the band isn't crowded and he knows of Hams doing the same thing. When the band is busy it's impolite to use A.M. coz it uses so much bandwidth. And the ending comment, before I tuned away was, "what they're doing is legal blah blah blah".

The static was there but not that bad and sigs were pretty strong. I had to show my face to the family. I was busy fixing an in-house wiring problem with the telephone system.

Fred

Interference is one thing; it's a way of life on Ham Radio, but you're describing anonymous and deliberate interference.

Some common sense needs to prevail, particularly respecting the fact that there are rock-bound guys on 1885 and 3885, some who have been there for many years. What outcome does anyone with half a brain expect in this case?

160, formerly the "gentleman's band" has become more and more like 75.  What a pity.