[SCCC] AM to SSB transition (transceivers)

[Wayne Overbeck]

I'd like to follow up a little more about the transition from AM to SSB 
in the 1950s and early 1960s.  Thanks to Art and Tree for adding their 
observations about this.

My earlier post was about what it was like to operate a phone contest on 
AM.  This is about the early transmitters and transceivers that made SSB 
practical for thousands of us.

At first SSB was an exotic specialty mode.  No one really questioned its 
superiority to AM for long-haul voice DX, but getting on was a technical and 
financial challenge.  That started to change in the late 1950s.  First of all a 
company named Central Electronics launched a line of high quality SSB 
exciters (the 10A, 10B and 20A) then the 100V, a 100-watt transmitter.
The company was acquired about 1959 and withdrew from the amateur 
radio market.  Too bad...

As Art pointed out, Collins Radio identified a military application and started 
making SSB transmitters, receivers and transceivers in the 1950s.  The S-Line 
became the standard of excellence for everyone, but it was too expensive for 
a lot of young hams, me included.  I looked at the Collins 75A4 and KWS-1 in 
awe in the 1950s.  By the 1960s I was even more awe-struck by the snazzy 
new styling of the S-Line.

Art also mentioned double sideband.  I had built a DSB transmitter from Don 
Stoner's "New Sideband Handbook," a 1958 CQ publication.  It worked 
well, but DSB wasn't SSB and I didn't feel welcome in the clubby world of 
SSB round-tables.  I put the DSB rig away and kept using my DX-100 on 
AM phone, which is where most of the action was in the late 1950s.

I think the key turning point in the popularization of SSB was the introduction 
of the Swan 120, Swan 140 and Swan 175 transceivers about 1961.  These 
were low-cost single-band transceivers that introduced thousands of hams to 
SSB.  They were far smaller than most previous SSB equipment and they were 
TRANSCEIVERS.  In one small box there was a complete transmitter and 
receiver that offered remarkably good performance for the price and size.
Many of us operated mobile with one of these in a car by 1962 or 1963.  
Herb Johnson, W6QKI, the founder of Swan, had come up with a 
breakthrough product.

Soon Swan offered the three-band Swan 240, also at a modest price.  Then 
Swan launched the 400, a five-band transceiver.  It had an outboard VFO, but 
it was still compact and affordable.  The VFO could be under the dash, 
with the rig itself in a car trunk.  Don Wallace, W6AM, used one of these for 
years in a succession of cars.  He still had it in his car when he drove up to his 
"radio ranch" for the 1986 video shoot in which I interviewed him for Mike 
Adams' "Radio Collector" public television series.   The uncut version of that 
video is still on YouTube.

Swan then managed to fit the VFO inside a five-band transceiver and launched 
the Swan 350, as mentioned by Tree.  That was probably Swan's most successful 
product and it introduced thousands more hams to SSB.  But by then Swan 
had a lot of competition in the SSB transceiver market.  National was making 
the NCX-3 and NCX-5, while Hallicrafters launched the SR-150 and Heathkit 
produced the SB-100 as a five-band transceiver kit.  Then there was the 
Galaxy 5 and later models from the successor to Globe Electronics.  Drake 
announced the TR-3 as a five-band transceiver with one KHz dial calibration.
Collins was still making the S-Line, including the KWM-2 transceiver (successor 
to the early KWM-1 triband unit).  There was also the mostly-solid-state SBE-33
transceiver.  By the time Kenwood announced the TS-520 and Yaesu produced 
the original FT-101, SSB had arrived.

By 1966, almost everybody competing in phone Sweepstakes was on SSB.   Soon 
AM was a nostalgia mode--not the place you went to operate contests or work new 
countries.

Thanks for following these tales of the transition from AM to SSB.  I hope others will 
offer more memories of ham radio in the pre-Woodstock era.

73, Wayne, N6NB

 
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