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Author Topic: coolest DX catch  (Read 3446 times)

Offline glimmer twin

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coolest DX catch
« on: February 01, 2014, 0219 UTC »
What was your best DX catch?

I remember in the mid 1990's when I first bought my house & was away from the noisy streetlights & was situated higher than before I would set my alarm for about 3:30 each morning & try for some of the RRI stations hoping to get some grayline advantage between here & Indonesia. I will never forget the morning when with the headphones on & pressing them tightly against my ears I finally heard that funky wurlitzer sounding "Song of the coconut isles" weakly seeping into my phones. It had that major DX sound like it was forced through water or something. I could picture the signal bouncing off the ionosphere & barely making it to me as I sat perched on the edge of my chair. I was so incredibly excited to finally hear it. I was using a DX398 and a random length wire that was about 20 meters long. No coax, no tuner just a portable & the wire clipped to the antenna. I've heard a lot of nice dx stuff since then but somehow nothing compares to that morning. Maybe the day I finally log LRA36 from my receivers but that has actually been somewhat sullied by the fact that I've gotten weak copy from various remote receivers of Antartica so I've already heard what it sounds like. With the RRI catch I had never heard the song before but had heard it described in GH's DX listening digest (the paper version that came in the mail) & I knew it when I finally heard it. Anybody have a similar experience they would like to share?
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Offline Jolly Roger

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Re: coolest DX catch
« Reply #1 on: February 01, 2014, 0620 UTC »
I've had a few that were cool, at least to me. About 1970-71 I get hold of my dads transistor portable. I find that by wrapping blasting wire around it a few turns and hanging the end up that I can actually hear signals on SW. My first station IDed as "Radio Naydalong" in a heavy accent. Radio Naydalong turned out to be Radio Nederlands. QSLed it. I got a HQ-110 and listened a lot. Later I would hear Voice of Laryngitis. First Pirate, recorded it, QSLed it. Legendary station. As I got more sophisticated equipment I heard cooler stuff. Air Traffic for the first Iraq war. Other military traffic when a US Armed Forces helicopter crashed, killing all aboard. A ship to shore radio call telling a passenger their parent had died. Many, many others. What an amazing hobby.
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Offline atrainradio

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Re: coolest DX catch
« Reply #2 on: February 01, 2014, 1715 UTC »
I'd have to say it was my first pirate logged ever. I remember being outside, freezing to death ( it was the dead of winter, -7 degrees) and with my little tecsun in hand I tuned to 6925. After a while I started to hear a carrier come on and then I heard some rock music. After a while, the ID came on and told me it was TCS, The Crystal Ship! This was before I was a member here. Ahhh, the smile that was on my face! Truly, SWL'ling is by far the coolest hobby there is. And the people who area involved, like us, know that it takes dedication, and sometimes a case of hypothermia if the house if chock full of QRM, to get the best DX.
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Offline jFarley

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Re: coolest DX catch
« Reply #3 on: February 01, 2014, 1821 UTC »
Coolest catches: a few seconds of audio from AFAN 6012, Radio Biafra just a few days prior to its shutdown

As well as the coolest catches, there are also the biggest disappointments, stations that you try to hear for years, and when you finally do, it's nothing like you imagined.  Like a lot of DXers, I needed Latvia for my NASWA count, and IIRC, your shot was to hear Radio Riga in a late afternoon slot.  This was always covered by some other stronger station, and over the course of several years of trying, I got bupkis.

One afternoon, I remember the excitement when I realized that the R Riga frequency was uncovered, and this was what I had been waiting for!  Wow, is this going to be great; Radio Freakin' Riga!  I've read about it, imagined what it would sound like.  What a letdown when the first audio through the headphones was "My name is Luka, I live on the second floor..."  Major bummage.

« Last Edit: February 01, 2014, 1831 UTC by jFarley »
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Offline fpeconsultant

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Re: coolest DX catch
« Reply #4 on: February 01, 2014, 2128 UTC »
Hey Jolly Roger - I copied a girl telling her mother that dad had died - one party was on the Cayman islands & the other in Jamaica
Was ship-shore Feb 14, 1994 0430z 4405kHz USB
I'm sure this happens alot but just thought I'd mention this if your log was the same that'd be wild.
And that was one of my most memorable catches - it was heartbreaking to listen to - i eventually tu(r)ned away.
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Re: coolest DX catch
« Reply #5 on: February 01, 2014, 2212 UTC »
I can think of two offhand. The first was a deckhand on a fishing boat in the Gulf of Alaska; he was on an HF phone patch to his girlfriend on the mainland somewhere. I was in the SF bay area at the time, and I could only hear his side of the conversation, but it was fascinating. He mainly went on about how uncomfortable and dangerous the day had been, but he kept coming back to how much money he was making.

The other was actually on VHF. I was living on California's central coast, and caught a military ham at Vandenberg talking to another military ham at Hickham on Oahu. They were just chewing the fat, but it was the first time I had heard long-distance VHF, probably due to a ducting event, and it was pretty exciting to me.

Offline redhat

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Re: coolest DX catch
« Reply #6 on: February 01, 2014, 2259 UTC »
It was a Saturday in July, 2006 or so and I was in a hurry to leave the house to help with a film screening in a neighboring state.  I had borrowed a Denon TU-1500RD from work as I was testing some equipment at home and needed something with RDS.  I had a 6 element ratshack beam on the roof with a rotor, and I was just dialing around when I heard something I didn't recognize, it was spanish.  I was pretty close the the Canadian boarder, so spanish FM was a rarity.  I had the beam pointed south, and a few seconds later, the display lit up and said "Exa 98.3."  After doing some research, I found out the station was just off the tip of texas, close to 2000 miles away.  Begrudgingly, I had to leave, but on the way out the door, I called my friend across town and left a voicemail and told him he may want to turn on his tuner and see what he could hear.  A few days later, we went through the tape he recorded and ID'd 26 stations in half a dozen states, some over 1000 miles away.  The APRS map was full of red that day, and I don't recall an e-skip opening that good since.

Several years later, I was letting an FM exciter run some music for the house, and I had a Sony XDR-F1HD running with a wire dipole in the window.  I think it was June or July again.  I had a streaming station feeding the transmitter, and was minding my own business when suddenly the music changed.  I looked at the transmitter to be sure it was still running and it was, then the music went back.  This happened a few more times, and this time I looked at the radio, and it was decoding HD from a station I'd never heard of.  Looked up the call sign and it was from the Phoenix metro, close to 1000 miles away.  I scanned the dial and found a few others that were making the journey.  I called the phone number for one of the stations and asked  for the chief engineer, then proceeded to tell him his HD's were being heard almost 1000 miles away.  He was a bit surprised.

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« Last Edit: February 01, 2014, 2312 UTC by redhat »
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Offline taschenrechner

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Re:
« Reply #7 on: February 02, 2014, 0020 UTC »
Not really exotic DX, but nothing could really top the feeling I got one night as a kid, sitting on the porch with a boombox listening to a ballgame on mw with my dad, when all of a sudden a Mexican station started creeping in. That was that. I was twelve or thirteen, and I've heard some impressive stuff since then, and it was exciting, but I'll never forget hearing that Mexican station.
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Re: coolest DX catch
« Reply #8 on: February 02, 2014, 2147 UTC »
Great ?: Believe it or not I have my logs from 1964 on to March '68 including 1967,  the Summer of E-Skip/T. V. DXing.  Had the perfect set-up with the t.v. antenna outside about 25' above ground. Living in the Willamette Valley I could see Mt. Hood from my bedroom window (in the winter/no leaves on trees). Anyhoo a small sampling:

June 29, 1967, 9-11pm,    KOA Denver NBC 4 "before Johnny Carson, sports news"
                                       KXJB Valley City, N. Dakota CBS 4 "Your Christopher Thought For Today"
(Unknown/didn't log date)  KHTL Superior, Nebraska ABC 4
July 5,                              KGNC Amarillo, Texas NBC 4 9:30pm "UNCLE" (7:30)
July 20,                             KTUK Phoenix, Arizona, ABC 3 2:00pm, "animal show, adv. for                                book...rabbit on show, Wrigles gum commercial"
July 20,                             KROD El Passo, Texas ABC 4
July 20,                             KFYR Bismark, N. Dakota 5
August ?                            KPHO Phoenix, Arizona 5
    "                                   KVOA Tuscon, Arizona 4 NBC
And while on leave from boot camp
June 5, 1968                      KOB  Albuquerque, N. Mexico 4 NBC
       "                                 KEY Santa Barbara, Calif. 3
       "                                 KROD (again)
I remember writing a letter to KXJB & I drew their logo, the CBS eye with KXJB TV4 Valley City within the eye. The station sent me one back & a p.s. which said that 'your drawing of our id is quite accurate'.
Fun times. Innocent times.
« Last Edit: February 02, 2014, 2150 UTC by Nella F. »