Re: [IRCA] 30 years of skywave DXing

[Stephen Airy <pianoplayer88key@xxxxxxxxx>]

Well, I haven't been DXing for 30 years, yet (I didn't have a radio 2 weeks before I was born, nor would I have known how to operate it), just 20 or so.  All the stories seem to be going in this topic, not the "DXers under the age of 30" topic, so I'll post my 100mW+3m_antenna / 250µV/m @ 3m here. :)

When I was about 10 (may have been 9, I don't remember now), I got a 10-speed bicycle for my birthday.  It came with a yellow analog-tuned sports AM/FM radio (just saw one on eBay - may buy one just for memory's sake if the price doesn't get bid up very high) whose performance, to put it kindly, wasn't all that great.
The radio's sensitivity and selectivity were both very poor.  For example, it was so insensitive that 1070 KNX, a station that comes in with a clear, nearly-noise-free signal on both my Tecsun radios and my parents' car radios, was barely audible, and that was on a good day.  Also, the selectivity was pretty bad, too.  Most of the locals (for example 600, 690, 760, 860, 910, 1130, 1170, 1360, 1470) bled several channels away from their assigned frequencies, with 1130 and especially 1170 being particularly bad.  I don't remember specifically, but I wouldn't be surprised if 1170's audio could be heard while tuned to 1130.
It was with this radio, though, that I cut my DXing teeth.  One night soon after I had gotten it, I was laying in my bed turning the dial to see what I could hear.  Sandwiched between a local 5kW religious KECR 9.3 miles away on 910 and a then-5kW Mexican XEMO 17.3 miles away, I heard what sounded like an extremely faint news/talk station buried right at the noise level in the splatter between the two stations.
I tried to listen to it the next day, and couldn't find it.  I asked my dad, an RF engineer, about it, and he explained skip to me.  Soon after that (don't remember if it was that night, or during a family camping trip to the beach maybe the next month), we tuned the station in on the much-superior car radio, and found it was 890 KDXU St. George, Utah.  Somewhere I believe I have an aircheck of their TOH ID at that time, and if I can find it I'll consider uploading it somewhere.  I can still remember the man's voice word-for-word to this day - "You're listening to Southern Utah's 890 K D X U, St George.  News / Talk / Sports!"

Ever since then, I've been hooked on primarily MW DXing.  Radios I've used include a few Panasonic RQ-SW10s and RQ-SW20s, a couple of which I still have and at least 1 is working, the Sony SRF-42 (don't know where it is now, and last I knew it wasn't functional), the Zenith Royal 705 (recently broke one of the connections on the local oscillator), and more recently, the Tecsun PL-380 and Tecsun PL-606.  Between the original radio and the Panasonic (first one I got was an RQ-SW10 for my 13th birthday), I had a Sony radio/cassette walkman (can't remember the model number) that had a much improved tuner.

It was with the Tecsun PL-380 that I got my first TP - 774 JOUB from Akita, Japan, last September, in spite of being only 7.3 miles from 5kW/50kW DA-N 760 KFMB.  In October, I got the best TP signal I've heard thus far with my Tecsun + Select-A-Tenna, this recording of JOUB: http://tinyurl.com/PL380-ElCajon-JOUB-20101020 ; KFMB had just switched to its daytime 5kW operation.  JOUB was a little noisier, but still audible a few minutes earlier when KFMB was running 50kW:  http://tinyurl.com/PL380-ElCaj-JOUB-20101020-B ; JOUB's signal was so good, in fact, that I even tried receiving it with my Panasonic RQ-SW20, whose selectivity is almost as bad as the Sony SRF-M37V/W (and probably WOULD be as bad if it was as sensitive).  I was able to hear it when KFMB was running 5 kW: http://tinyurl.com/RQSW20-ElCaj-JOUB-20101020-A but earlier when KFMB was on 50kW, it was tough, but I could still hear a little of it: 
 http://tinyurl.com/RQSW20-ElCaj-JOUB-20101020-B

In November, I got what I would consider the best-under-the-conditions catch of my yet-young DXing "career".  I'm only 7.7 miles from a 5kW station on 600, which runs the evil IBOC system.  In spite of that, I was able to dig out faint audio from 594 JOAK Tokyo, Japan, at about a minute into this recording: http://tinyurl.com/JOAK-near-ElCajon-PL380

So far my best confirmed daytime catch is 700 KALL North Salt Lake City, at a distance of 626 miles.  I'm about 32 miles NNE of 77kW 690 XEWW.  KALL's TOH ID, as recorded on the PL-606, is about 49 seconds into: http://tinyurl.com/PL606-KALL-ID-ElCajon-1pm ; I also think I've heard 1680 KNTS Seattle, WA, fighting with KGED Fresno, CA, at a considerably greater distance than KALL, but I have yet to get it confirmed.  Now, I'm beginning to wonder if it could be a spur from a local, as I heard faint Spanish on 1680 a few days ago (I thought we were done with midday skywave.)  I've been bit that way twice before - I thought I had 1560 KNZR Bakersfield in the middle of the day, but it turned out to be a spur from 1700 XEPE; also I thought I had 660 KTNN Window Rock midday, but that ended up being a spur from 540 XESURF.

I've been enjoying reading the DXing stories on here, and look forward to reading more. :)

--- On Fri, 4/15/11, Tim Hills <thills@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

From: Tim Hills <thills@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [IRCA] 30 years of skywave DXing
To: "Mailing list for the International Radio Club of America" <irca@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Friday, April 15, 2011, 6:19 AM

Been watching this thread but with the rush at the end of Tax season this is the first chance I've had to sit down at home longer than it takes to inhale my breakfast. At 51 there aren't too many online groups that make me feel like a young pup....

The DX bug bit me when I was about 9.
My father had gotten me a Zenith portable for my birthday, he was a Zenith factory rep at the time. I used it to listen to the local top 40 station mostly but one night I was turning the dial I heard a weak signal and listened to it for a while. I was quite surprised that the station was in far off and exotic Omaha. The very same WOW if I recall. Ford dealership commercial/jingle is all I remember clearly. My bedroom was in the basement but when I took the radio into the back yard I found stations in San Francisco and Denver the same night.

I was hooked.

The CE of one of the local TV/radio stations was a neighbor at the time and when I told him about it he told me it was probably E layer skip and that shortwave stations could be heard from around the world and loaned me a Transoceanic that opened up a new world for me. Not only could I hear Moscow, London and Cuba easily but the MW reception brought in more stations than I knew existed. Never occurred to me to keep a log.

My main focus for DX over the next 42 years has been HF with MW mixed in and I'm getting back into it seriously again. I've used everything from crude crystal rigs to to Lab-grade WJ and Racal receivers in places as varied as dense urban to out in the Sonoran desert 30 miles from the nearest power-line or other humans.

I'll never forget the first DX with that Pepto-Bismol pink radio with the Zenith badge.

Tim Hills
Sioux Falls, SD

On 4/13/2011 7:24, Rick Dau wrote:
>   April 13, 1981.  4:30 a.m.
>   In my 2nd-story bedroom in my parents' farmhouse in the middle of Pottawattamie
> County, Iowa, I'm already up, as usual, listening to the conclusion of WOW-590's
> nightly broadcast of the Larry King Show.  And, as usual, WOW heads right into
> its mix of Top 40 and AdCon music immediately afterwards.  The first song is one
> that I don't particularly care for, so I tune up the dial until I find a station
> that is playing a song that I really like at the time, Roseanne Cash's "Seven
> Year Ache".  At the end of the song, the DJ (whom, I would find out years later,
> was the legendary Bill Mack) comes on and mentions during his chatter that I'm
> listening to WBAP.  I give no second thought to this, although I'm curious as to
> where this station is, since I've never heard it before and it sounds like it's
> coming from Omaha.  Then I hear an advertisement that mentions...FORT WORTH. I'm floored by this, as I had no idea my GE clock radio could pick up anything
> that distant.  Over the course of the next few mornings, I hear places like Los
> Angeles, Nashville, New York City, Chicago, Cincinnati, Toronto, Detroit,
> Louisville, Denver, New Orleans, Winnipeg, Dallas, Little Rock, Richmond, San
> Antonio, and others.  And at the age of 16, I'm hooked.
> 
>   And THAT is how it all began.  :)  And "Seven Year Ache" still has a special
> place in my heart.  
>   
> 73,
> Rick Dau
> Suth Omaha, Nebraska
> _______________________________________________
> 

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