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Best DXing you have ever had??

M

MotoMuzak

Guest
This was inspired by a thread relating to Digital Radio Mondiale over at the Ibiquity Radio board. I was going to post it as a reply to that thread but I figured that, due to its subject matter, it would be better at home here..... ;o)


My personal best DXing record:
I have actually heard the New York-based KQ2H amateur radio repeater at my (then) home in eastern Vancouver, Washington (it's north of Portland, Oregon) inthe late 1990s using a Radio Shack PRO-74 police scanner and the cheap-fanny stock rubber duckie antenna that shipped with it......anyhoo if I remember right it was just a couple weeks before Christmas, either 1998 or 1999. All I remember was it was incredibly staticky (would be after travelling some 3,000+ miles from New York to western Washington! ;o) but above it all I was able to clearly make out an apparently automated female's voice saying "KQ2H Repeater" before the squelch closed again on my rig. Then it sounded like some guy in Boston talking to someone else nearby.

I have it written down in a log-book I have in the attic at home somewhere.........IF my parents didn't throw it out when cleaning up there last month!!

GOD those were the days.......from what I understand the repeater was taken out during the September 11 attacks so that must explain why I haven't heard it since. But obviously--and being in the mifddle of winter--the conditions were supreme that time....I think it was blasting in here for a good few days before it faded back into infinity............

But that goes down in my files as the "Best DX I Have Ever Logged" (Shortwave broadcasts notwithstanding... ;o)
 
A couple of great tropo events come to mind. One in the late 80s bringing Pittsburgh, St. Louis and lots of other markets to North Central Indiana. More recently, a giant fog event a few Novembers ago brought stations as far as Saginaw, MI to Dayton, Oh. Even caught some rabbit ears TV DX including audio from a French language TV station. I had WOMC from Detroit during that opening; the Saturday night request show took a caller listening in South Bend driving back to Detroit and not being able to see much in the fog.
 
There was a temperature inversion that lasted several days around Thanksgiving of 1986. Cable TV systems at 30 miles were unable to receive watchable local Indy signals. In Martisnville, Indiana Class B 97.1 WENS less than 30 miles away was being crushed by several signals. I can't recall my best catch of that opening, but for raw DX intensity, that one was truly memorable. The phone lines were jammed at most TV & radio stations with callers who couldn't pick them up. Twas a wild & crazy few days...
 
Some of the best DXing I ever had was while on the road. My friend and I were headed from Birmingham to Atlanta for a concert and we had to pass through a massive line of thunderstorms along the way. From the weather radar it was a line that stretched down into the Gulf and up into the northern states - a really well-formed long line. We caught the storm about 30 miles east of Birmimgham and I turned the radio on to get a weather update, but instead found several FM stations from all along the line, culminating with CBC Montreal on 93.5, hammering Birmingham's class C WDJC on 93.7.

It's not my most distant FM DX, but by far the most interesting situation to be DXing in! ;D
 
BobOnTheJob said:
There was a temperature inversion that lasted several days around Thanksgiving of 1986. Cable TV systems at 30 miles were unable to receive watchable local Indy signals. In Martisnville, Indiana Class B 97.1 WENS less than 30 miles away was being crushed by several signals. I can't recall my best catch of that opening, but for raw DX intensity, that one was truly memorable. The phone lines were jammed at most TV & radio stations with callers who couldn't pick them up. Twas a wild & crazy few days...
Click to expand...

Maybe it's just me, but it seems odd that listeners would be so addicted to their favorite radio or TV station as to call them during an outage of a few hours. They should have been DX'ing!

As for me...I've mainly DX'ed TV via tropo. I've done FM too, especially lately, and of course e-skip, but TV tropo is where my heart is. Most of the years I've been "active" TV DXing ('99, '00, '01, '02, '05, '06) have had at least one really good major tropo opening. During the heat wave in late July 1999 there was tropo almost every day, with me receiving Iowa (300 - 380 mi), Chicago (405 mi), Omaha (~435 mi), and Detroit (530 mi) using nothing more than rabbit ears; about a month later a gigantic hurricane-triggered opening filled practically all the channels and gave me a tentative reception of CFMT-TV-1 ch 69 from London, ON, 596 mi away via tropo. I even logged LPTV's from 250 - 350 mi distant.

In 2000, there was a string of excellent tropo days in late August. I now had an outdoor antenna (VU-190XR) on a rotator, so I had a much more capable DX'ing setup. I had St. Louis, Kansas City, even Central South Dakota in well. And on September 7th of that year, I logged Springfield, MO ch 33 at 660 mi and had a tentative reception of KWHB, Tulsa, OK, 762 mi to the SW of here.

2001 brought more good tropo openings spread out through the summer, but the best was on the 4th, when I logged Cleveland, OH ch 19 at 643 miles.

In 2002, the best tropo was in mid-July, with Kansas City (542 mi), Topeka (565 mi), St. Louis (575 mi - on LOW VHF too!), and Springfield (660 mi) received. I also logged WOCH-LP 28 Chicago carrying MTV2, my most distant LPTV at 408 miles, heard a Chicago 2m repeater on an HT, as well as what seemed to be public safety or UHF mobile traffic around 500 MHz.

2003 I was more into shortwave, but remember seeing Iowa stations one lucky night. 2004 was an awful year for tropo.

In 2005, I replaced the VU-190XR with a Channel Master 4228 (no VHF antenna, but the CM does a good job on VHF-high) in late July, re-enabling my TV DX'ing. My best catch occurred about two weeks after installing the antenna - KSFX, Springfield, MO, at 660 mi.

During July 15 - 17, 2006, I logged 56 NEW stations, including DTV's from Nebraska, South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana, up to 575 miles! I also saw the Cleveland area again, adding WQHS to my log.

Es wise, my best on TV is KTVN - 2 Reno, NV, at 1,470 miles, and on FM it's WNUE from Titusville, FL, at 1,382 miles. Best tropo on FM (with rabbit ears) was on the 7th of this month with a surprise reception of WLKB, Bay City, MI, at 461 miles.
 
favorite catch...5am Saturday morning from Nashville...KNX 1070 (in 1988)
unusual with 1070 in so crowded around here
 
best catch ever for me had to be radio caracol from Cartagena Colombia, in Southeast Iowa, on a walkman radio, very clear signal, they seemed to come in every night in 1994 I can't remember if it was on 1170 or 1180
 
Last winter, got KOA Denver from Devon, PA (20 mi W of Philly) - at about 9:30 pm. With today's crowded dial, that was a heck of a catch - 1,560 miles! That was my best AM catch.

On FM, its hard to say because I've picked up a number of FMs from the southern plains and FL in New England thanks to E-skip. My best TV catch occurred when I was about 10 years old - back in the 70s! I had my old black and white TV with connected aerial (1/2 of a 'rabbit ear' setup) and I picked up channel 2, KNOP-TV North Platte, NE from Richmond, VA (1,260 miles)! Happened around 8 am on a summer morning and lasted until around 9:30 or so. Came in pretty well too. Interesting that the Today show - at the time - continued on live for CDT affiliates while ending at 9 am for us.
 
E skip from Cuba on both channels 3 and 6 fairly frequently. I remember a cartoon where the "revolutionary" army was overthrowing "el gobierno de" somebody or other with the heroic kid at the controls of the plane. Needless to say, the "revolution" triumphed to cheering crowds.
 
Best AM catch was while living in SE Michigan in the early 80s at sundown. I was camped on 580 as I could hear something under CKWW, but couldn't ID it. CKWW was typically city grade in Monroe County. CKWW changed pattern, and while they were down I heard an announcer say, "right here on WLES." Timing is everything!

Best TV catch, from the same location, KTWO Channel 2, Casper WY with a Channel Master 3617 antenna at right angle to WJBK Detroit.

FM was WSM-FM while driving in the car in Perrysburg OH.

Somewhat a DX story ... while in Detroit, I worked morning TX shift at WLQV-1500. When I would drive in on I-94 before day pattern change in the spring, I would see the towers in the distance, but clearly behind their audio was WTOP Washington DC.

DX is fun.
 
From Coldwater, MI, my best DX ever would be the super tropo last July. I had wall to wall Wisconsin and Minnesota stations all day on Sunday 7/16. This would be capped off by confirming Minneapolis, Saint Cloud, and later shattering my tropo distance record by hearing KBRK 93.7 from Brookings, South Dakota from 634 miles!

Haven't fared so well with translators and LPFM's. My distance record there is 59 miles.
 
Two come to mind for me.

Early '90s when I lived in Florida, my parents and I were driving around Tampa and were digging the sounds of CKMR "More 94" from Windsor, Ontario! All kinds of Detroit area stations were coming in, but that one was the clearest so we listened to it for probably an hour or so.

Also in the early '90s, while driving through central PA (70-80 miles or so north of Harrisburg) and flipping around the dial, I heard the end of "Every Breath You Take" by the Police followed by.... "South Florida's New Coast 97.3"... and as soon as it was said, it was completely gone. What a thrill it was to catch a station from my home state way up there! Obviously its was a meteor dx.
 
Many years ago (Mid 90s?) I breifly caught WCBS from the top of a hill here in the San Francisco bay area. I was actually trying to catch KRVN (Omaha) and ultimately did, and was shocked to hear WCBS in the background for a few minutes. I didn't even think that was possible, and of course I've never been able to catch it again.

In the cheating catagory, I was in the Navy in the 80s and with our high receiver-sensitivity HF receivers I caught KOMO, KCBS, KGO, KNX and WOAI from about 1000 miles east of Japan. The receiver had a freq range of 3-30 Mhz, but I used a 3Mhz 'box' to cancel out the 3Mhz signal and the leftover would be my AM signal. For example, I tuned the receiver to 3810 to catch KGO (810Khz being the remainder). Those were fun times. ;)
 
The "best" catch was this year getting KSL 1160 from Englewood FL on a "so so" Bose Wave radio. I've been trying to duplicate it since but no go.
 
AM: KFI pre-sunrise in Omaha, NE.

FM: probably 2 or 3 portland, me and 2 Boston, MA stations heard in Atlanta, GA. Heard 3WV once out of PA while located just 30 miles north of the 94.5 tower in N Texas (same freq).
 
"The "best" catch was this year getting KSL 1160 from Englewood FL...."

I thought KSL was Salt Lake City.....????

Been at least a couple of years since I have listened tho. I used to get KSL regularly on my mediocre Radioshack DX375 a few years back, and in the truck it would completely hammer the local Spanish AM on 1150. (Not certain of the call letters but pre-1999 it was known as KKEY, based out of a studio not too far from where I used to live at the time in Vancouver, WA. They even had their own transmitter sticks right in their backyard!! They might still be standing but I don't know for certain as I haven't driven out that way in quite a while. From what I understand the old KKEY studio is now a chiropractor's office......)

In re TV DXing--

Some time ago using a 1995-model RCA VR652HF VCR, right after a late-afternoon screening of "Goofy Movie" I channel surfed while the tape was rewinding.......caught a Seahawks game on channel 13, KVAL from Eugene, OR (CBS affiliates) loud and clear and in colour to boot. This was at that same home in Vancouver, circa 2000. Timeframe was probably in February or so, weather was dark and rainy so you'd think that a high-VHF station wouldn't propagate too far considering. Also we had (still do have) a UPN and now FOX affiliate on channel 12, KPTV in Portland whose sidebands would normally prevent 13 from coming in this far. Antenna at that time was a 20+ year old Channel Master 102-element (something like that, it was really big if nothing else)VHF/UHF aerial tied into said VCR and a 1999 model JVC 27" television.

Needless to say it hasn't come in at all since. Occasionally Channel 15, KBTC in Chehalis, WA (PBS station) pops in and says "hi", but that's only if the conditions are exceptional. Like today, sunny and about 80deg. If my folks hadn't gotten their new wide-bandwidth low-sensitivity HDTV in April and a new aerial just a coupla weeks ago--a large branch fell off the huge oak tree in the backyard and mangled the Channel Master beyond repair--I'd probably be seeing it now!!

ATSC DXing should prove interesting......I've a Samsung ATSC set-top receiver tied to my old TV in my "lair" down in my folkses basement (Hey, I don't live at home any more.......but a fifth-storey apartment in downtown Portland is probably one of the crappiest places I have ever been to receive even local ATSC stations over the air successfully.......) and I ordred a 110-element Yagi from a "clearing house" recently that I will be installing on the side of the house, and possibly attached to a rotor and amplifier. At the altitude the house is situated at, should prove rather interesting!! (I'll try to report some of my "catches" when I get it all set up.)
 
Moto: KSL is salt lake City; I think it is on 1160 but I got it well enough/long enough to get a positive ID then poof, no more KSL since then. I had receive KOA Denver a number of times from Englewood which I though was the limit since the AM tuner is just average. I left the station on 1160 for a few minutes one night just before the top of the hour and that's when the station came in.
I'm sure there are bigger/better catches out there but it was fun to hook a pretty good un.
 
Two FM catches from Florida . . .

WQYK-99.5 from Tampa/St. Pete over WBAI on my old car's radio on Route 22 East, Watchung NJ, mid-90's. Happened on a weekday in the 6 PM hour during the WBAI nightly newscast.

WAVV-101.1 from Marco Island/Naples over WCBS-FM (then-Jack) in Bridgewater NJ, summer of '06 on a Saturday around 9 PM. The tipoff was the format -- WAVV is one of the few FMs left with a traditional easy listening format.

I also managed WBWN-104.1 from Bloomington/Normal IL over B104 (Lehigh Valley) in Bridgewater NJ, '93 or '94. Happened on a Sunday night when B104 was running "Casey's Top 40".
 
Best DX I ever had was my first TV catch. When I was in grade school I used to fool around with an old dial TV on Saturday morning seeing what if anything was on Channel 2. I lived in suburban Philly so CH 2 was open. On foggy mornings I'd get WMAR from Baltimore and sometimes WCBS in NYC. One Saturday morning the picture was bizarre with lines running thru it and drifting up and down like an ocean wave. Right on the half hour an image appeared on the screen saying KVOO and a voice said KVOO Tulsa. I'm still fascinated by it 40 years later.
 
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