The AM Forum

Of course there are so many variables, but as a very broad approximation, if the antenna was a 66' end fed wire, 33' to the top and a top of 33', with a modest ground connection (say 3 or 4 6' long grounding rods) would it be reasonable to imagine that you will put out a decent signal (say no less than S7) up to 10 miles from one's QTH?  Or, would it be more or less than 10 miles - during the day? Assuming the receiving station had the same antenna setup. Thanks.

160 meters,10 watts, 10 miles in the daytime???  No problem,  even with a mediocre antenna....

What about the range on 10m, with say a 10m dipole?

At 10 a.m. ?    :)

Depending on conditions, worldwide communications would be possible on 10 meters.

Aah, but the groundwave. :c)

What I ought to do, with my first AM tx, is make it for 10m, not 160m.  I would image I could rag-chew up to 10 miles groundwave and talk to the world - when 10 really opens up.

10M groundwave is less than 160 during daylight. I used to work 5-10W 160M mobile stations out to 15-20 miles from home loading up an 80M dipole with a Viking I as a kid.

Look at CB for a 10M coverage comparison, its not very far with simple antennas. 6M is worse and at 2M its much better but its no longer groundwave.

Carl

Getting back to the original question, I've worked Joe, N3IBX, on 160 about 10AM. He was using his Globe Chief with about 15 watts out. He's about 168 miles from me. Although the signal was low, the fact that the noise ceiling was exceptionally low made communications rather easy.

10M AM, 10 Watts can go half way around the world when the band is open.


FRED

We once did talk-in on 160M AM for Warren, then NY2H, while HE was mobile starting about 30 miles out from my place when we had a party some years ago.

He was running a top-hat, center loaded mobile antenna. Forget the rig itself, but it wasn't more than a couple dozen watts.

It doesnt take much power on any HF-MF band or 6M when the propagation gods cooperate. Ive over 10 European contacts on 160 CW with 100 milliwatts, including deep into Poland. I also have at least DXCC on the 8 HF bands with 5W or less, CW of course 8).

AM is just a sideline interest ;D

There's a 10-15 dB SNR difference between CW and SSB. It would only be greater between CW and AM.

Then use modulated CW ???

That would go over well around 1830 kHz!   ;D