a good friend of mine who got his ticket just a few weeks before I did was 
doing work for Fred, W3PHL, so several of us got to visit one evening.  He 
had that transmitter actually built into its own shielded =walk-in room with 
the components all on shelves.  He was quite proud of how tight it was and, 
to demonstrate, he tuned in KYW, a 50,000 watt station just a couple of 
miles away.  He took the transistor radio into the transmitter room with all 
of us in there and shut the door.  Of course, the signal disappeared 
completely.  He also had a landmark tower at that site in valley Forge.
Lou Kolb
Voice-over Artist:
Radio/TV Ads, Video narrations
Messages On-hold:
www.loukolb.com
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Duke, K5XU" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, April 29, 2013 6:38 PM
Subject: Re: The Sideband War & Other LIDS


> My first receiver came to live at my house at Christmas of 1966, just
> before I turned 12 years old.
>
> The Side Band War was in full roar by then, as was the almost nightly
> "Let's get smashing drunk and see who can out cuss each other" battle
> between Conn, W4EBG, and Walt, WB4AOE, who both lived near Paducah,
> Ky.
>
> I learned a bunch of new words from that pair, but never figured out
> how to use most of them in a way that would create anything close to a
> good impression.
>
> One night when my dad was sitting with me listening to 75 meters, I
> tuned across Conn and Walt just as one of them let fly a particularly
> long graphic description of how the other was about to get his behind
> whipped.
>
> "Well, Son," my dad said. "Now you know how not to behave on the
> radio."
>
> Though I missed most of the event I am about to mention, apparently
> there was, for awhile in the early 1960's, a movement known as the "AM
> Rebellion." Most of the movers and shakers of that group ran at least
> an admitted Kilowatt, and many ran what was known as "Super
> Modulation." That is, they would modulate say a 300 watt input RF
> signal with as much audio as they could possibly generate. A few of
> the Super Modulation types claimed to be running as much as 5 KW of
> audio.
>
> One of those guys was Fred, W3PHL, near Philadelphia, who just died a
> year or two ago.
>
> I don't have the whole story, but it seams that Fred had some monster
> modulator cranked up on 40 meters nearly every night on a frequency
> that was used by the Voice of America. Eventually, VOA complained to
> the FCC because listeners were complaining that Fred's signal was
> louder than their's.
>
> There was another Fred, W6QS, who mostly stayed on 20 meters, but
> would show up on 40 meters now and then. I don't know exactly what he
> was running, but his carrier alone would make any frequency totally
> noise free when he transmitted, to say nothing of his audio.
>
> One of the craziest stories spread by some in the AM community was
> that some "rich ham out in California" gave away a dozen 2 KW SSB rigs
> to anyone who would promise to use them to QRM the AM operators. That
> one made me laugh, both because it was so twisted, and because so many
> AM operators took it seriously.
>
>
> Mike Duke, K5XU