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Oh yeah!!!! I've always thought that made some nice sense to have a Weather FREQ broadcasting on the AM BC band. Well, if that is indeed a LPB AM-5, unless that took a big lightning hit and fried that, a decent tech shouldn't have too much trouble replacing anything on that transmitter. Even if a new crystal is needed, a DDS oscillator will do very nicely on that. I know this, since a friend of mine is running his AM Carrier-Current station with an AM-5 and a DDS OSC for his selected FREQ. So, far, rock solid for 8 years with him on that. So, can be done.
The other thing is that not that many people today have the real estate to string up a +100ft antenna.
^THIS!
~275' for an AM half-wave dipole at the top of the MW BCB band, and for most realistic deployments, a horizontal MW antenna is going to be so low as to encounter significant ground losses along with largely being a cloud warmer with what power it does radiate upwards.
There is the vertical route, but that also typically means serious loading to get a reasonably workable deployment, plus it is also dealing with ground losses unless deploying numerous ground radials or quarter-wave tuned elevated radials. Elevated radials can be loaded as well, but that typically incurs even further losses.
Now factor in the typical MW noise floor these days, plus how many even general radio enthusiasts have truly decent MW antennas optimized for weak-signal reception these days?
It is akin to an amateur doing 160m mobile. Even with a few hundred watts into an extremely-loaded vertical, the often resulting QRPp experience can be an exercise in patience.... or frustration, and that is on an band with (hopefully) other active participants having (again, hopefully) decent antennas for receiving.
