OK, the title of this blog post has an element of click bait in it. Just this morning I was listening to the Old Military Radio Net on 3885 AM. I’m sure some of those guys would disagree with the assertion that SSB is better than AM. But I think this old Air Traffic Command video lays it out very well.
I kind wish they had dicussed Double Sideband, Suppressed Carrier transmission.
I wonder want the year of production of this video was. Does anybody know?
For the record: I am the owner of a DX-40, a DX-60, and a DX-100. I also am on 10 meter AM with a converted CB rig. So I have transmitted both sidebands, and the carrier.
DSB, as in double-sideband supressed carrier? Dr. John Costas (K2EN) did some groundbreaking work in the 1950’s on this and showed that it had some real advantages. His paper “Synchronous Communications” detailed this method. Might be a good area for the homebrewer. But SSB prevailed, probably spectrum efficiency?
https://archive.org/download/nrf_Costas-IRE_Dec1956/Costas-IRE_Dec1956_text.pdf
Mike: Yea, DSB-SC. I did a lot of this. DSB was my first phone homebrewing. And we are now talking to builders of the Direct Conversion receiver about a possible next step — adding a DSB transmitter to make the rig a DSB TX, DC RX rig, with the VFO the only common stage. 96 blog post on DSB here: https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/search/label/DSB 73 Bill
Bill, The above link (thanks to Anonymous) is the classic paper. My own paper copy was victim to mildew. Now for a deep dive-73!
I also have the Doug DeMaw article on how to build a simple DSB transmitter. That is the one that got me started in homebrew phone. Some will claim that it is “just as easy” to build an SSB transmitter, but most of these pundits have built neither a DSB nor an SSB transmitter. If they had, they would realize that DSB is a LOT easier.
Here is the Doug DeMaw article on how to build a simple DSB transmitter: https://soldersmoke.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-doug-demaw-article-that-got-me-into.html