[SCCC] AM to SSB transition (transceivers)

[Jim Neiger]

Not  on AM to SSB topic, but one of my favorite radio memories - 1955 
Field Day, Salem Amateur Radio Club,  W7SAA.  Hauling W7IQI's  fully 
assembled 2 element 20 meter quad, with tower, through the streets of 
Salem onboard a flat bed truck.  Radios Johnson's, AM and CW. Probably 
Hallicrafters receiver, Or maybe everybody's dream, National HRO-60.  We 
had pictures of Collins 75A1 and KW-1 in our QST.   Amplifier W7IQI's 
pair of 813's, on the same flat bed in a very large rack.  And the joy 
of hearing W7ASG pound out code with his Vibroplex.  Smooth like W4KFC. 
   I was forever hooked on contesting after that weekend.

Jim  N6TJ  (W7WJB)


On 12/18/2018 6:14 AM, Tree wrote:
> Nice posting Wayne!!  I had forgotten about the Swan tri-bander - the 240
> and never saw the single band radios.
>
> Heathkit also had some single band SSB radios (HW12, HW22 and HW32 if I
> remember correctly) and of course there was the triband Eico 753.  And the
> WRL duobander!!
>
> I remember at least one double side band guy in the AM roundtables.  They
> were welcome since their audio demodulated okay in the AM mode.
>
> My vintage station doesn't do SSB.  Have a Collins 32V3 and 75A2 plus a
> Ranger for 160 meters.
>
> Remember seeing the W6AM mobile setup once going up the freeway to
> Visalia.  We flagged him over and got the tour.
>
> Tree
>
> On Tue, Dec 18, 2018 at 3:12 AM Wayne Overbeck via SCCC <sccc at contesting.com>
> wrote:
>
>> 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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