Joe, you ask some very good and most interesting questions. I strongly
recommend that you do a little investigating on the topic of radio
propagation. There are several excellent, basic informational pieces on this
topic. It is an extremely interesting topic and a topic that is very
fundamental to how hams communicate over various distances on different ham
bands and at different times of the day and year. If you go to Google and
put the following into the search edit box exactly as I show it here, you
will find tons of excellent sources of great information that will tell you
all about radio waves and how they bounce off the ionosphere, the
relationships between frequency and radio wave propagation, etc. It is
extremely fascinating:

"radio propagation", "radio waves", "ionosphere" 

You need to use the quote marks and the commas exactly as I show it above.
In fact, you can even copy this string into your clipboard and then, paste
it into the Google search edit box, and you will be on your way to a world
of titillating information that will answer all of your questions about how
hams communicate across the country and around the world.

Finally, with respect to SSB, which stands for Single Sideband, as a general
standard, lower sideband (LSB) is used on the 160, 80/75, and 40 meter ham
bands, and upper sideband (USB) is used on the 20 through 10 meter ham
bands. The TS-590 has a button on the front that selects lower or upper
sideband. 

I am curious, what ham license do you hold? When did you take your license
exam and how long have you been interested in ham radio? 

Ron, K8HSY


-----Original Message-----
From: For blind ham radio operators [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Joe Quinn
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2014 11:46 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: How does it get so far?

I'm rather new to the whole hf band so you'll have to forgive me, but how
do=  people make  contacts in, for instance California, if they live all the
way=  in Florida? Does it have something to do with the 60 foot or even
longer an= tenna  that's hanging outside their house?if so, isn't  HF
similar in distan= ce to a.m.? I can only get a.m. station  about like maybe
15 to 30 miles awa= y from my house. Maybe even longer, I don't know the
distance. But, living i= n Louisiana, I definitely cannot get an a.m.
station from Alabama. There's p= robably something totally different about
hf that allows such a long distanc= e is to be made.
On a totally unrelated note, does the Kenwood ts590 support USB and lsb?
Loo= king at the specs today I only saw Ssb.
Thanks for answering my questions! Everyone of them. :-)=