When I was in high school and college in the 1970's, I used to listen on my shortwave to a bunch of guys on 160 meters on the northwest side of Chicago. I remember one guy names Doc, another named Jim - a group of sort of grumpy old guys who'd been hams forever. They worked AM only and disdained SSB operators, called them "mushmouths." They used to be pretty active, seemed to be on every night. I bought a shortwave receiver recently and have checked out 160 meters, but I never hear anything anymore. Seems like a million years ago, up in my bedroom late at night, eavesdropping on those guys. Now *I'm* the grumpy old guy!
Nice piece! Very much my story in the UK in the sixties when I did CW and built my own SSB rigs grinding the Xtals for the lattice filters as a schoolboy!
@@lindosland I do love listening into 160 meter AM! Too much wire for my property so I'm gonna do a magloop and may a coil driven vertical with some radials. I live right on the edge of a lake so propagation can be interesting. "mush mouths" LOL I've always noticed that but never heard that term! I remember when regular AM radios would go past 1710KHz easy and I felt like I discovered some "secret" frequency!
Thanks for the info on this band. I just started installation of a 1.6-10m long wire perpendicular to my 80-6m OCFD. My noise floor is much lower than yours so I hope for more opportunities in that band. 73!
I have this band on one of my radios. I often hear one side of a conversation, and miss the other side because the two signals are at different levels at my location.
You can tell if a station is AM by listening for the carrier (steady tone). When you hear a station in LSB mode, tune up just a little bit, and if you hear a carrier right next to them, it might be theirs, so try AM mode and see if they come in. Advantage of AM is much clearer voice quality. Disadvantage of AM is waste of bandwidth and power: AM mode is twice as wide (sidebands on both sides of a carrier), and consumes 4X the power, of the equivalent signal in LSB mode. K6JSH
+Josh Lehan (Krellan) It's not a "waste" if it's a pleasure to copy. :) Let's just say less "efficient" . There is PLENTY of ROOM down there on 160 especially.
As another person pointed out, this band is much more active in the winter months at night than during the summer. I've always love listening to this band on cold fall/winter nights. The fact that there aren't a whole lot of people that use it, is the reason why I like it. I tend to think that the other bands are too crowded some times. (Note: You can hear an AM broadcast on the band at 1.860 MHz every Saturday night. It broadcasts some HAM radio news. Here's the site: wa0rcr.mbohnhoffinc.com/)
Go to facebook and frank znidarsic to hear my 100 year old radiola 3. It tunes to the 160 meter band. Sometimes just above to am band I hear something that sounds like a teletype or Lorain A.
