When is over-modulation inevitable?

According to general theory, when your peak voltage is twice the carrier voltage you have reached 100% modulation. At that precise moment your peak watts are 4x your carrier watts. In the real world, with negative peak limiting, you can raise your positive peaks much higher , although there are very few techs out there who are capable of doing this.

 

SUPER modulation was a rage at the peak of AM on bands like 75 and 40 meters Like you said clip the negitive peaks and you can rase the positive ones but even the big boys figured out 150% is about the limit where things get iffy ....

I still run AM but spend much more time on FM ....

 

Could be .... The oldtimers on 75 meter AM used to talk that way ..

This is the last 100+ watt AM station of mine in 1969 .....

 

WA4GCH has a good answer. I was just going to say the answer to "When is over-modulation inevitable" is whenever you have a super whack pack job done.

 

OH NO DR NO Not a wack pack

 

I think that WA4GCH has a couple SUPER WHACK packed 1,000,000 watt radios. Just look at the pic in post #14.

 

You gave me away .......

1,000,000 watts plate modulated into this antenna ......

 

Yep that's what I saw you running a whack packed radio into. But I'm not telling about your 500,000 watt mobile unit with the 10,000 watt driver.

 

Tattle tail .....