Leaderboard

I was licensed for operations on two of the Part 90 frequencies using AM - just above 'CB' and just below 31 MHZ for many years. It was OK, but during the peak of the 11 year sunspot cycle, the frequencies were a bit noisy with other stations from all over the US "skipping" to my location. That is the primary reason that most Public Safety agencies that were on low band in the 50's, 60's and early 70's, went to VHF. I still have the commercial EF Johnson Messenger radios and even though they are tube type, they are still type certified and still operate as designed (into a dummy load for testing only). These days, with very few stations using low band - it might be a good place to go for Part 90 licensing if you want to be under the radar for some reason. My equipment was AM and worked better than some, because the AM system did not demodulate skip FM signals very well, so the interference to my system was minimal. Mobiles with a 5/8 wave base loaded antenna would net roughly 20 to 30 miles mobile to mobile and 40 + miles mobile to a simplex base. Never needed a repeater with that type of local coverage.