Brian, don't be too quick to dump the Harris rig. There are probably a lot of parts in it you can use. Of course if it is working and taking a lot of space you may be better off selling it intact to a bc station looking for a back up rig.
If AM QSOs are slower it is probably because of the carrier. With SSB there is no carrier so operators tend to jabber back and forth. The carrier does a number of useful things; one of these is to hold the frequency while you pause to begin a new topic or whatever. There was one time I even stopped talking in a QSO to go get a schematic upstairs--I needed it to give a guy I was working an answer to a question and I knew exactly where it was so I told him I'd be back in a minute and I got up and went and got the schematic and left the rig transmitting 300 w. and came back and picked up where I left off. I knew that was better than turning the QSO over to him, then he'd go on and it might be half an hour before we'd get back to his question if ever. Without a carrier I could not have done that. I used to work a guy on SSB who should have been an AMer. He'd make these long transmissions with loooooong pauses during which he'd keep the rig in transmit. Well, on SSB most operators think he quit and it was their turn. So they'd start up. Then he would resume having never put his rig in receive. Then there would be a nice long double. If you didn't know to wait for him to formally end his transmission with a call sign, he'd get you every time. We tried to tell him on SSB what he does just doesn't work but he never could get that. I think he became inactive. If I had known at the time I would have encouraged him to take up AM. All he needed was a carrier (a nice strong one). He was a very laid back guy and would have made a great AM daytime ragchewer. 73 Rob K5UJ ______________________________________________________________ Our Main Website: http://www.amfone.net AMRadio mailing list Searchable Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/amradio@mailman.qth.net/ List Rules (must read!): http://w5ami.net/amradiofaq.html List Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/amradio Post: AMRadio@mailman.qth.net To unsubscribe, send an email to amradio-requ...@mailman.qth.net with the word unsubscribe in the message body. This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
