Anyone think you're weird for DXing?

[PhilJSmith67]

I was even told that the TV would burn out if I left it on a staticky station.

Hah! ;D I recall my mother saying something like this a few times because she would hear me clicking through lots of channels on an old Quasar B&W TV. "You're going to break that set and your father won't give you another one." I once gave the wiseass remark, "If you're only using 2-5-7-9-11 and three UHF stations, you're not getting your money's worth out of the TV. Look at all those other channels you're not using!" She never bothered me about it again, especially after another time when, in the middle of a show, she was unable to watch our local CBS station on 2 because of E-skip interference. I quickly found another CBS station on UHF booming in via tropo, which lasted the remainder of the show. Our neighbor called -- they were having the same problem -- so my mother told them to try channel 18, which worked. I was like the hero of the hour.

 

[quadraphonic]

It's a hobby and a pastime, just like sports or gardening or bird watching or reading romance novels or whatever.

Not that I'm a hardcore DXer, but when I listen to some faraway station in a public place, it always seems to interest people more than repulse them. Even if they don't understand why I'd want to listen through static to something that was "different" [definitely not enough of that on the radio today to even try to be a hardcore DXer], it's interesting to them. "So that person is in Chicago? 1500 miles away? Neat."

If it ever were to cost me any friends, well that's no big loss. "Bye" to that person would be a waste of time.

 

[FreddyE1977]

I resigned myself to the fact that most people find me to be weird
long, long ago! :

 

[jlehmann]

I find it amazing that anyone would find DXing to be “wrong”. It may not for everyone, but neither is Opera or Country or Jazz. And they are certainly not "wrong". Well, maybe Opera!

Most of those that find DXing wrong can be find on the HD Radio board on here, and other sites...

 

[WPPCProductions]

Hahaha Yes, my freinds say I'm nuts.While i'm traveling in the car. I 'm always fiddling
with the dial.

 

[kirjtc2]

I worked at a convenience store during Game 1 of the 2004 World Series. The store had a radio, but no local stations were airing the game. My boss (a huge baseball fan) was surprised I could tune in the AM station from Boston that was airing it, and I got a lot of questions about it from customers.

It's amazing how many people don't know it's possible.

 

[charlestondxman]

Yes, there's a lot of people that think that skywave AM reception cannot be picked up, or that DX is a car abbreviation.

Some people think that I am weird, but when I show people how it can be done, that I can pick up Orlando and Miami AM stations from Charleston, SC, they are amazed.

Also, you have to DX to get certain programs, like here in Charleston, John Boy and Billy since the local station went off the air, Atlanta Braves baseball on the radio, and to get any good oldies format.

 

[tanner]

What orlando station do you recieve in Charleston, SC

 

[dxer720]

I was one who discovered AM DXing at about 8 or 9, lying in bed late at night with a little red Panasonic transistor (which I still have 33 years later). I was a Milwaukee Brewers & Chicago Cubs fan. I first found that I sometimes hear another call of the same game. Then I heard other games. I also had one of the first Walkman-type radios, so I could DX on long trips in the car. I had (& still do) a Mura Hi Stepper that was FM only. I didn't know then that that radio was as close to a DX machine as personal radios get. Even now, it pulls in everything.

Yes. My ex-wife always wanted me to "listen to something".

I still DX at least a few minutes every day. My fiance enjoys DXing, since we sat in her car in Burlington, WI, listening to a French-Canadian FM news broadcast from the Canadian side of Niagra Falls. This paragraph should have begun with "we DX".

I don't use any special antenna, so my logs may not be as large as some, but I know how to get the most from whatever radio (form my collestion of 87) I'm using at the moment.

 

[BRNout]

My Dad taught me the skill of dxing, though he forgot about it himself long ago.

In about 1970, I remember being about 5 years old in my Dad's car in the parking lot of Tyson's Corner in northern VA one night (waiting for my mother, who was shopping) while he tuned in WABC from New York and WLS from Chicago. I thought it was amazing - after all, we could only get WABC north of the Susquehanna River, right? And Chicago? Wow. After all, this was before getting things via cable or satellite were really possible for most. So it seemed to be magical stuff.

Then my dad explained to the curious little guy about how radio signals bounce off layers of the upper atmosphere at night...adding that FM doesn't do this (not 100% true, I later learned). From then on, I had to try it myself and - sure enough - it worked! From then on, I was hooked. A couple years later I learned that I could listen to Harry Harrison on WABC in the morning too. So, it didn't even have to be dark - only close to it.

This is how geeks are born! Been a dxer ever since. Something I really don't care to share with too many others outside of the radio community, lest they think that I am weird! :

 

[FreddyE1977]

I worked at a convenience store during Game 1 of the 2004 World Series. The store had a radio, but no local stations were airing the game. My boss (a huge baseball fan) was surprised I could tune in the AM station from Boston that was airing it, and I got a lot of questions about it from customers.

It's amazing how many people don't know it's possible.

Glad you could find it. I was in the car driving from Muskegeon, MI to Pittsburgh during the climactic
7th. game of the 2001 Yanks-D'backs Series, and could not find it on a single station anyplace. That
struck me as positively un-American.

 

[amfmsw]

I was the H.S. radio kid. When kids would ride in my car and push the radio buttons, only 77 WABC & WIBG 990 was set. The others landed on dead air...until we cruised at night! 770 would be a slight twist to 790 WAEB Allentown, then 800 CKLW. 990 at night went away, so it was a slight twist to WCFL 1000. 890 WLS was a fav. And of course 1520 WKBW. Later WFIL.

When my father would shop for a "new" used car, he would always check the radio stations pre-set. He knew a lot of adults would listen to WIBG and WIP for music...that didn't bother him. But if he hit the last button, and it flew to a dead station at the end of the dial, he KNEW a teenager was using the car for cruising, and wouldn't consider it. That last "dead" button during the day was WKBW 1520 at night. Ahh, fatherly wisdom!

 

[tanner]

I remember back when I lived in South Georgia in the late 60's; I loved the mighty 690 WAPE. When I moved to Eastern North Carolina, it was neat when I could go to Morehad City and recieve WAPE. At that point I think I was hooked. When I went to Boy Scout camp I would take my little radio and cruise up and down the dial. At night I was excited when I could recieve my local Top 40 station at night,
WRNB, 250 watts @ 1490 from 20 miles out. I had to place the radio just right and I think the wind had to blow in the right direction.

From that point on I think I beame a total DX Freak. When I went to the Outer Banks I woulld criuse the dial and pick up WABC and all the others from up North. Immedialely I wanted to move to the Outer Banks so I could recieve WABC 24/7. I would always piss my friends off because I would criuse up and down the dial and their response would be WTF!! We can all relate.

Once I got married my first wife was real cold so I would go to sleep with headsets on. She would wonder why the sound would always change in the headsets ((it was because I was surfing, not on waves).

My second wife still wonders why I want to surf up and down the dial. Her favorite response to me is I cannot stand static.

However, as all of us DX freaks know all the BS now on the airwaves has taken most of the fun out of our hobby.

My best DX's ever!!!!!!!!!!!

KSL 1160 recieved in Eastern North Carolina in the late 70's
WHAS recieved Whidby Island (Washington State) in the early 80's

Living in Orlando, Florida sucks now as far as DXing goes because

A) our ground conductivity is bad
B) Lots of little low power AM stations around
C) Mexican and Cuban inteference (what happened to frequency protection)

Damn, I'm out of the closet ( as far as being a DX Geeek Freek-A-Zoid) I have been reading these posts for a long time and now I am a member.

 

[radiocph]

I first became aware of far-off radio stations, perhaps in mid-1977 when our family went to northern Mississippi to visit grandparents. One night, I picked up WBAP-820 out of Texas....My parents grew up listening to far-off radio stations anyway, so they didn't think it was so "wierd". Heck, we all live in LA now, and one of their favorite stations is KGO-810 out of SF!

We occasionally got the San Diego stations in LA, when the tropo was just right. In late 1979, I sent off a letter to Channel 39 in San Diego, telling them, among other things, how good I felt their news was. In about a week, I received the usual QSL letter, then a few days later, I got another letter from the news department, thanking me for my letter. That was a nice ego pick-up for a 13 year old kid.,,,

As for classmates and such...most I felt were more loyal to a particular type of music (AOR, disco, etc.) than a particular station per se. I remember one camping trip, in the mountains outside of San Diego, where the local stations didn't come in. We danced all night to XEROK-830 in Juarez, MX....Beyond that, there wasn't a lot of radio interest around me. I was more into shortwave, and people would be mildly impressed with my being able to listen to the BBC World Service, etc., but other interests (sports, cars, etc.) had a stronger pull on them, I guess.

I've moved away from AM-Dxing for the most part, mostly because the band has gone to pot with too many stations, electrical noise from computers, etc. But sometimes when I'm in a rural area, I'll tune around at night in hopes of hearing a far-off station....

 

[gr8oldies]

Some of my classmates did listen to WLS in Chicago at night (in Western Ohio not a daytime catch). I'd blare WABC sometimes. I guess we were all DXing; CKLW, though blasting in during the day was 150 miles away and not very audible at night after pattern change (I was in western Ohio). WMEE, Ft. Wayne, signed on in 1972 and a lot of kids switched over (some said due to less soul music than CKLW) but we were excluded from WMEE's night pattern as well. WOWO always blasted in. We had a local FM top 40 in WMER, Celina and WPTH in Ft Wayne carried TM Stereo Rock in the early 70s, maybe 1973 or so.

 

[vibe]

I got interested in it as a kid. My uncle was a huge St. Louis Cards (baseball) fan who lived in Naugatuck CT, only 70MI from NYC but he had a real sensitive radio and got 1120 KMOX real well despite the strong 1130 from NYC. A friend of mine who died in Vietnam received KFI from Conn a number of times at age 13.
I'm more of a casual DX er and can sit in the car at a beach for 15 min and try for some catches, particularly in winter. But a good walk there is better than playing with the knobs so I guess I'm not too hard core.
But I did receive KSL and KOA from Englewood FL at nite ( on my so so Bose) and some X banders about 30-60 min before local sunset from the Dallas area, Corpus, and Ft. Smith from the Beach (on the car radio) so it's fun to do at times. One of the other goodies was getting the Beaumont TX 560 from near Ocala FL one Sat morning about 40 min after local sunrise, and 1160 AM out of Dallas just before sunset in Englewood. All this stuff in the last year or 2.

 

[TheRob]

I even demonstrated DXing to my family. My mom and one of my younger brothers watched as an XEPN (Piedras Negras) title card, clear as a bell, showed up on our kitchen TV in Lawrence, Kansas. They still weren't interested. I'm still weird. I became aware of DXing because in our pre-cable days, we would occasionally receive TV stations from Columbia-Jeff. City, Joplin, Springfield, Hannibal/Quincy, Des Moines, Wichita and Lincoln during the summer. Same with FM, though I don't know why I found it novel to listen to the same music on Omaha's "Sweet 98" over Kansas City's "Q104." My first FM e-skip (by luck) was from a CHR station in Jacksonville, Florida. I listened to it for an hour, absolutely amazed, before it faded.

The central U.S. is great for DXing (e-skip coast to coast, tropo in most directions, few natural obstacles). However, I currently live in the depression of a hilly area, and close to an AT&T dish array. There's too much electrical interference for AM, and I only logged one FM station last year. Hopefully last year was just a bad year. I might have to break out the old casette tapes for a DX flashback!

 

[rip-n-read]

Why is it, if you have a hobby that is quiet, pleasant, and a big old-fashioned, you're considered "weird?" Sad world we live in, where it's considered perfectly normal to plop down for hours on end in front of the TV, to watch network programming and eat frozen pizza.

 

[SuperRadioFan]

it's considered perfectly normal to plop down for hours on end in front of the TV, to watch network programming and eat frozen pizza.

Damn, my routine usually includes putting that frozen pizza into to the oven, cook it, and then eat it! ;D

Yeh my brother 10 years my senior got me hooked on DXing. Best catch was receiving KFI in New Jersey in the 60s. KSL also came it somewhat regularly (in the winter) after WJJD signed off. Never got KNX or any 50kw SF station.

 

[vibe]

there are so many people who caught KFI from the east coast in the 60's that seemed to be "the hook" that started/kept them DX ing. I'm curious what stations west coasters coveted at that time and very occasionally caught?
Long time before ML extra innings or the web the only way to keep up with sporting events was to have a real sensitive AM radio that could pull in many markets from up to 1000 mi (or more) away.
And I'm sure I wasn't alone in this pursuit. So if there are/were a lot others doing this (and still doing this) by definition it doesn't make us weird, just normal folk making full use of the technology available to obtain said enjoyment.
I used to have a saying with a certain flame many years ago, "let's have some sex then I'll go dx."
Now THAT'S weird!