I listen to AM talk in the morning, on the way to lunch, and on the way home. I have an actual AM/FM radio in the kitchen and bathroom, plus Alexa in the living room. I bought a new Mazda recently and was concerned if it still had AM in it, cuz I'd read somewhere that Ford might be phasing them out. It did, so all is well for now. I've been listening to AM talk since the '70s.
A receiver would pick up something but poorly compared to a resonate antenna. You need a resonate antenna in order to transmit with any power. Hooking up today's solid-state transceivers to an antenna that is very far off-resonance and trying to transmit, will probably burn out the finals or blow the internal circuit breaker. While an antenna tuner may make it possible to load up on things like an ungrounded gutter, the power loss in the tuner is substantial. Antennas are an interesting study and with HF such as 80 meters, building a wire antenna with any gain over a 1/2 wave dipole takes some space. Rotatable beams at 40 meters and lower are not too practical and very expensive and require a strong tower. If you have ever messed with CB (11 meters) then you probably know about using an SWR meter to match the antenna for the lowest SWR. It is all about minimizing the reflected wave back into the transmitter. Once the lowest SWR is found and an antenna is adjusted, then both maximum reception and maximum transmission with that said antenna will be achieved.
I have had an XM radio subscription ever since the early days because I like jazz /samba/etc. Over the years they have cut that selection back from many to only one station (only to replace them with even more "classic rock."). I mainly keep it for the one jazz station, the 1940s Big Band station, the classical station and a couple of talk radio folks I like.
When I got my first truck, I put a CB radio in it...just because. I took it out because I could not understand a darned word anyone was saying...not the lingo, the clarity. But that's just me (♫There's the bathroom on the right♫)
With the giveaway licensing these days, no reason not to get a license. No morse code and multiple choice questions easy to memorize . The reason a license would help in an emergency is having a call sign would make it easy for emergency responders to find you unless you were mobile. Also, others would take your call for help more seriously if you know emergency procedures and codes. I am of the opinion that ham radio will be basically useless in the event that we lose cell, internet, and other means of communication. Someone like Don might benefit if an earthquake took out all the local services and the emergency services had a ham monitoring for calls. HF such as 20 meters might be of benefit in getting messages to relatives in other states. Ham radio no longer plays the important role it once did in emergencies, however, it can be a benefit in some cases.
We have some amplification equipment but anything more than 'turn that knob' and I need post it notes. I have an engineer friend for all my dirty work.
It was in answer to Mary asking if a TV antenna tower would work as an antenna for a ham transceiver radio. I should have said not directly to the TV antenna feedline, but to the tower only if the tower could be made resonate with the frequency being used which would require the tower to be a given height at the given frequency, then a gamma match could be attached and get a match to the 52 ohm impedance so it could be fed through a coupling capacitor to the 52-ohm input/output of the transceiver. As I stated, a tuner could be used but with great losses in the tuner and a poor received signal and very very little transmitted signal. Hope this clears up the confusion.
That was why I simply said to use it as a receiver but not a transmitter. Too complicated for most folks.
It might work fair for receiving if they hooked the center of the coax fitting to the shield only of the coax going up to the TV antenna. The tower itself being grounded might not give very good results. If it is fed with ribbon flat line then maybe one side of the 300 ohm flat line to the center of the coax and the other side to the outer or ground and that might work like a folded vertical and receive very well depending on the height of the tower and the frequency being received.
Don't try to pull any high-brow word trickery with me, woman. I'm an expert at all this stuff. Well, an expert listener, at least.
Alrighty then, old man, we can discuss using the tower to make an end fed sloper! I bet Mary just can't wait.
"Wait til you get my age, sweetheart . . . " My high school buddy was big into CB radios when we were kids, he had one in his bedroom and then in his car when we got old enough to drive. I remember him talking something about antenna lengths, yadda yadda. I remember going on "rabbit hunts" or something with him. But we graduated almost 10 years ago so I've forgotten a lot of that stuff.