[BC] Re: WLW related historical question

[Jeffrey Kopp]

>[Glen:]  You mean, like, Kahn PowerSide?  <g>

No, I was unaware of that thing, though I see today that it was heavily discussed here several years ago. I do recall the earlier Kahn ISB system; in about 1979 I used two shipboard sideband receivers to try to hear it on Tijuana's station.

I was thinking of something simpler like A3H (which I see is now coded H3E). In the mid-70s during the clumsy conversion of marine voice to SSB, 2182 remained A3H ("compatible sideband") during the transition. Its performance was dismal (there was no appreciable improvement in output over AM), but the situation was very different (low-powered mobile transceivers) from broadcasting.

As most receivers today are digitally tuned, the carrier would need to be shifted 2 or 2.5kHz to put the wider sideband within the narrow bandpass of today's receivers while tuned to a 10kHz step, but I now  realize that would put all our carriers in unanticipated places (as received outside our borders), so the change would have to be continental.

"Back in the day" we could offset tune our receivers to hear a wider response; it was this trick I was thinking of. One can still do this on an analog tuner (or the rare digital tuner with 1kHz steps), though the audible improvement is meager compared to the old days.