Joe wrote:

I'm looking for a new cd (that's in a different thread) but
I forgot to ask... I've never owned an SSB unit. What exactly
will an ssb unit do for me? Does that just give you more channels?

SSB stands for Single Side Band, suppressed carrier. It is amplitude
modulated. AM--Amplitude Modulation, transmits the carrier and two
side bands, which result from mixing the carrier signal with the audio
from the microphone. This process of mixing is called modulation. The
resulting sidebands reside above and below the carrier frequency at
frequencies equal to the sum and difference between the carrier and
audio frequencies. In SSB, the carrier and one of the sidebands are
removed. Then all of the power is used to amplify the remaining
sideband before being transmitted. Thus, there are two modes of SSB,
USB--Upper Side Band, and LSB--Lower Side Band.

SSB has advantages, such as much narrower bandwidth (takes up less
frequency space) and as such is more resistent to certain types of weak
signal fading. Also, since all of the power from the amplifier is
concentrated in one sideband, that narrower signal carries a bigger
punch than an equivalent signal using double-sideband AM.

It does not give you more channels, but with proper filtering and
detection, two contacts can be conducted on the same "channel", one
using USB and the other using LSB, without interfering with each other.

Scott
--
Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
-- Rich Kulawiec