How and when did you become interested in DX?

[nd2023]

For me, it started 7 years ago when I was 10. I heard another radio station overpowering 97.5 PST (a local CHR). It turned out to be WWMS 97.5 from Oxford, Mississippi. That was my first e-skip catch. I didn't bother looking for other stations, and I was actually annoyed at first. Later, I heard WBLI 106.1 from Long Island overpower WJJZ 106.1 due to tropo. I noticed many "new" stations on the dial, but I don't remember them. Since then, I was very interested in receiving distant radio stations.<P ID="signature">______________
17-year-old radio geek
Location: Princeton Junction, NJ
AIM: KewlDude471</P>

 

[RadioJay]

It was when I was eight and got my first radio. It was a Panasonic stereo with tape deck and phonograph. I was hooked when I discovered I could hear far away AM stations at night. I even kept a log of all the stations I picked up back then. It wasn't until years later when I found out about tropo and E-Skip on FM. The nighttime AM stations became boring as I would always pick up the same ones but my E-Skip experiences on FM were what really got me into DX and made it an all time favorite hobby of mine. I am still fairly new to FM DX, but I always wonder when the next E-Skip opening may be because you never know what you may hear or where it will come from. It's always exciting to hear a station that sounds out of the ordinary on a local frequency or one that pops up on an unused frequency. <P ID="signature">______________
Moe: (Sees a microphone in a radio studio) Ooh, a microphonie!

Curly: Or a phoney at the mike!

Moe: Quiet numbskulls I'm broadcastin'!

From The Three Stooges episode "Micro-Phoneys"</P>

 

[JeremyAndrews]

> For me, it started 7 years ago when I was 10. I heard
> another radio station overpowering 97.5 PST (a local CHR).
> It turned out to be WWMS 97.5 from Oxford, Mississippi.
> That was my first e-skip catch. I didn't bother looking for
> other stations, and I was actually annoyed at first. Later,
> I heard WBLI 106.1 from Long Island overpower WJJZ 106.1 due
> to tropo. I noticed many "new" stations on the dial, but I
> don't remember them. Since then, I was very interested in
> receiving distant radio stations.
>
I think it was about 11 or 12 or 13 years ago when I was 6 or 7 or 8. First I played around with my radio and noticed some wierd stations coming in on 99.9 and 101.5.

They were WNSN-101.5 South Bend, IN and WHFB-99.9 Benton Harbor, MI. WHFB was Hot AC as "The Sunset Coast's B99" I went on the internet to find out where "The Sunset Coast" was but had no luck. Later I found out they were in Michigan and Indiana. And it went on from there. I soon discovered a large majority of the Grand Rapids, Muskegon and West Michigan stations and from then, I became an FM DXer.

AM came around the same time. I was outside McDonalds in Zion, IL talking to some guy about radio and how I was going out of town. He told me at night you could hear the Chicago AMs (WBBM, WMAQ, etc) far off at night. I started playing with the AM radio and it went on from there. I think 1530 WSAI, 650 WSM and 880 WCBS were among my first AM DX stations.
<P ID="signature">______________
</P>

 

[pianoplayer88key]

> For me, it started 7 years ago when I was 10. I heard
> another radio station overpowering 97.5 PST (a local CHR).
> It turned out to be WWMS 97.5 from Oxford, Mississippi.
> That was my first e-skip catch. I didn't bother looking for
> other stations, and I was actually annoyed at first. Later,
> I heard WBLI 106.1 from Long Island overpower WJJZ 106.1 due
> to tropo. I noticed many "new" stations on the dial, but I
> don't remember them. Since then, I was very interested in
> receiving distant radio stations.
>

My first time was I got a free very cheaply made radio with a bicycle when I was about 10 or so (one I no longer have). I was listening one night (it had a difficult time with local stations even sometimes - selectivity and sensitivity were terrible but way better than a crystal set) and noticed a station I couldn't normally hear. It was just BARELY audible, and I couldn't find it in the daytime. I figured it was a little below 910 kHz, a strong local that I knew of, so sometime later my dad and I went "channel surfing" on a car radio, and brought in 890 KDXU from St. George, Utah. (I'm in San Diego, CA.) That's what got my DX'ing started.

I'm also occasionally interested in FM DX, but I don't really have any decent radios or antennas available to me (at least up to my standards). I actually have specific stations I want to hear on the FM band, all of which are either at least 100 miles away over poor terrain (and I live on the wayward side of a hill that's blocking my path to the stations), are adjacent (.2 mHz away) or co-channel to locals (often the same direction), or any of the above combined.

A few examples of ones I'd like to be able to hear in full-quieting stereo from El Cajon, CA, include, but aren't limited to 103.3 in Lindsay, CA, 101.1 in Ft Worth, TX, 105.1 in Los Angeles, CA, 107.1 in Washington, DC, and maybe a few others. The TX and DC stations might be difficult, as I prefer not to seek FAA clearance to put up a super tall tower.

 

[KML0224]

I lived in southern Maine back in the spring of 1986. I saw a car ad appear on channel 2. I thought it was strange since I never picked up channel 2 from Bangor (WLBZ-TV) before. Boston? No, they were/are a non-commercial station (WGBH-TV). It turned out to be WCBD-TV channel 2 of Charleston, SC. Boy did I freak out! Up to that point, I had only received faint signals of channel 4 and 5 from Boston a couple of times a week. As for the "other" type of skip (more stable and usually signals within 250 miles), I once got WFSB-TV (CBS) channel 3 of Hartford, CT. I knew it was channel 3 and "Eyewitness News" because the anchorman was Jeffrey Cole and I'm orignally from the Hartford area (and came back to this area 18 years ago today). Funny thing is...I've never picked a Maine TV station from here. Ever.

I didn't discover skip on FM until about a year later, while living here in greater Hartford.

 

[wxctintern]

Many years ago when I was a little boy (I'm 23 now) I had a radio in my room instead of a TV and I remember falling asleep many nights listening to KB-1520 out of Buffalo, NY which at that time was a Country Station. I remember thinking they had to be one heck of a powerful station to reach Bristol, Connecticut. I also didn't understand why I couldn't pick up the station during the daytime. Later on my father told me that for some reason AM stations travel farther at night than during the daytime. Years later I remember picking up on a walkman 1500 WTOP, 1130 WBBR, and 1560 WQEW, that's when I really became intrested in DX.

WSB AM 750 Atlanta is the station farthest south I've picked up in Connecticut. WJR AM 760 Detroit is the Western Most US Station I've picked up. And of course I regularly can pick up 740 from Toronto and 800 from Windsor Ontario and 690/940 from Montreal.

My first taste of TV DX came around the summer of 1995. I remember sitting at my kitchen table in Bristol, CT with a little pocket TV picking up WBZ-4 Boston, WCVB-5 Boston, WLNE-6 New Bedford, WHDH-7 Boston, WJAR-10 Providence, WPRI-12 Providence, and WGBX-44 Boston. That was the first time i had ever heard of Channel 44. I had heard of all the others because back then the Hartford Courant TV Guide listed all them in addition to the CT Stations.

I think the first time I heard FM DX was several years ago. I was in the car playing with the car radio while my mom was going to garagae sales and I remember hearing that Portugese Station on 97.3 FM in New Bedford completely take over the semi-local 97.3 FM WZBG from Litchfield, CT.

And of course my best FM catch came last year when I picked up 94.1 FM from Baton Rouge, Louisiana in Southington, CT. That was dumb luck on my part. I was listening to HOT 93.7 the local Hip-Hop Station on my GE SuperRadio and I was changing the station to 94.3 WYBC, which is the semi-local Urban AC station when I heard a station in-between the two playing hip-hop. I thought that CC had blown up WHJY in Providence and flipped it to hip-hop since I often pick up WHJY and other Providence area stations. Then I heard the legal ID
"Baton Rouge's Home of Blazin' Hip-Hop and R&B MAX 94-1 WEMX Kentwood-Baton Rouge".<P ID="signature">______________
~Jay Clark~
</P>

 

[clichemoth]

> For me, it started 7 years ago when I was 10. I heard
> another radio station overpowering 97.5 PST (a local CHR).
> It turned out to be WWMS 97.5 from Oxford, Mississippi.
> That was my first e-skip catch. I didn't bother looking for
> other stations, and I was actually annoyed at first. Later,
> I heard WBLI 106.1 from Long Island overpower WJJZ 106.1 due
> to tropo. I noticed many "new" stations on the dial, but I
> don't remember them. Since then, I was very interested in
> receiving distant radio stations.
>

The concept of getting radio from far away has intrigued me since I was like 8 or so. Originally, I used my new discovery to listen to sports (mostly baseball and hockey) when there wasn't a game on TV. The Kansas City Royals were my team (were they on KCMO then as I'm thinking, or was it WHB as it is now?).

I remember getting a bunch of far-off TV stations as a kid as well. WCBS and WABC definitely happened, and we got a couple of Caribbean and Mexican stations as well over the years. Until recently, I never actually tried to do it and just caught it when it came.

As far as FM, well, I have never actually heard any FM DX to my knowledge. My outdoor antenna gets me ~120 miles of range and the whole band is clogged. Perhaps when non-country interrupts one of the many country stations here in north/central AL, I'll notice.

 

[jcolletta275]

My DX hobby got started pretty early on... on the FM side, no less. I can't remember the year, exactly, but I couldn't have been more than 9 years old. WAYF in West Palm Beach had just signed on, and as I was living in North Miami Beach at the time, I tried everything I could think of to pick them up. My experiments (which, if I recall correctly, may have included putting two halves of those plastic eggshells you use for Easter on each end of my FM dipole antenna... hey, I was a little kid, I didn't know that wouldn't do anything!) resulted in some pretty decent tropo catches from across the glades, Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville.

The AM hobby didn't really start until around 1997 (I would have been 13 at that point) when I managed to pick up WLS from Clearwater while visiting my grandparents. When I got back to South Florida, I tried picking up as much as I could on every radio I had, logging every little thing I heard. Of course I quickly learned of the Bahamas Radio Network and all the AM stations up and down the Florida peninsula. My major catches then (even through all the noise on a crappy little portable) included WBT, WSB, and WABC.

The AM side really picked up for me, though, when I moved to Greensboro, NC in 2000. Since AM radio in the Piedmont Triad consists mostly of smaller, local signals (there are only about two stations that actually have city-grade coverage across the entire market), it was easy for me to pick up stations like WJR, WABC, WCBS, WLS, WINS, KDKA, WBZ, KYW, WTAM, etc. Pretty much all of the Northeast and Midwest were open to me. Today, at my current locationin Michigan, my most recent goal has been to see how far west I can go. My record is KOA, althogh everyone seems to pick them up at least once. A recent discovery has been KCJJ 1630 from Iowa City. Just 1kW at night, but as it's on the X-Band, it comes in like a local quite often.

I'm not really set up for FM or TV DX'ing right now, so AM remains the focus of my hobby, but from time to time I'll get some nice tropo catches on the FM, VHF and UHF bands. Recently, thanks to a storm knocking off a local on 92.1, I was able to pull in some stations in that area of the dial from all over the state... and I even managed to nab Power 92 from Chicago! While most people have given up on it, I still find AM DX'ing to be a fun hobby. Listening through the electronic garbage can get irritating, yes, but it's sometimes worth it just to see if there's anything new out there.

EDIT:
And, in continuing with my annoying and obnoxious "dedicating posts to whatever station is on the corresponding frequency" program, this post is dedicated to three stations that I heard fighting it out when WBBM and WGN signed off for transmitter maintenence not too long ago:
News/Talk 790, WSGW, Saginaw, MI
Country 790 CIGM, Sudbury, ON, and
French-Canadian 790 CIAO, Brampton, ON
<P ID="signature">______________
"Get educated. Read stuff on the web and believe all of it."
-- Phil Hendrie</P><P ID="edit"><FONT class="small">Edited by J.C. on 06/20/05 08:35 PM.</FONT></P>

 

[foreverchanges]

When I was young I used to sit in my backyard listening to FM on a walkman in Fayetteville, AR...I was probably 8 or 9 when I'd notice in the morning I could get Rock 99 out of Springfield, Mo....or sometimes 106.5 out of Kansas City. I caught probably the only e-skip I can remember one Saturday morning in the backyard...my walkman was going crazy!! Every station was from Virginia or North Carolina! This lasted 3 or 4 hours, then gradually turned into some good tropo...

I got into AM hanging out with my grandparents in Central Iowa. AM could be explained to me....how the ionosphere worked...somehow I understood that at 10 years old. I couldn't understand at the time how we could listen to KIOA almost all the way from Des Moines to Kansas City though!

I never understood the theory behind FM DX until very recently. I only knew growing up if I had a really long wire on my reciever, in Fayetteville, AR I could get Z104.5 from Tulsa! I don't really have any special equipment, but it's still fun to find stuff that's not supposed to be there!

 

[jras20]

I gues I started DX'n probably in the Early 90's when I was down at my country place between Houston/Victoria when I started recieving Houston stations from that far out. I was amazed at that, so I finaly put up a new antenna out there to recieve channels. Basicly I started DX'n so I can get more from my radio then just one city, A lot of people cant believe me when I say I can recieve about or over 50 FM radio stations both at my main home and down at my country home, I tell them well you aught to start DX'n .

 

[schmave]

I gave this question some thought and still couldn't remember exactly when I started listening to long-distance radio. Really the first I can think of was the MLB All-Star Game in either 1987 or 1988, when I was either 9 or 10. My dad and I were coming home from somewhere after dark and switching around radio, I realized we were getting the game on stations from Columbus (where I live), New York City, Rochester, Chicago, St. Louis and Atlanta among other cities.
I really started listening to a lot of late-night AM radio to hear the Cubs night games on WGN. This was 1989, the year before our cable system got WGN for good and the summer the Cubs won the NL East. I thought it was awesome to be able to hear the games at night. Soon after came Cardinal games on KMOX, the Braves on WSB, the Tigers on WJR, et al.
I really didn't learn a lot about FM and TV DXing or directional signals until recent years, however.

> For me, it started 7 years ago when I was 10. I heard
> another radio station overpowering 97.5 PST (a local CHR).
> It turned out to be WWMS 97.5 from Oxford, Mississippi.
> That was my first e-skip catch. I didn't bother looking for
> other stations, and I was actually annoyed at first. Later,
> I heard WBLI 106.1 from Long Island overpower WJJZ 106.1 due
> to tropo. I noticed many "new" stations on the dial, but I
> don't remember them. Since then, I was very interested in
> receiving distant radio stations.
>

 

[Lawppy]

As a self-proclaimed FM DX nut, my DX beginnings are pretty hard to believe. When I was 10 years old, I was introduced to the world of TV DX'ing. I remember our local channel 3 (WWMT-Kalamazoo) getting wiped out by another station from Florida. My brother and I didn't know what it was called, so we gave it a name.. Country Cable! After my first summer of 'country cable', I became interested in tropo on TV. I could often get Detroit, Chicago, Cleveland and Indianapolis TV stations around here along with occasional farther away signals.

The next summer, I really began to lose interest in TV DX.. I started playing around with the stereo in my parents car. One fateful night in the summer of 1994, I had a DX'perience that I will never forget. I was scanning the dial when I heard a signal on 94.7, which at the time was a radio wasteland with absolutely nothing but static. (A local christian rock station would eventually occupy 94.7 in 1998) The song ended with an ID calling the station 'San Angelo's Hit Music Station, Kixy 94.7'. I was completely floored by this station and I believe I ran inside the house jumping around. This was happening to a kid who hadn't heard anything past Chicago or Detroit on FM. Little did I know it, but I had just experienced Sporadic E.

Unfortunately, I lost interest in DX'ing for a couple years after this incident. There were a few brief spikes in interest in my pubescent years, but the DX'ing hobby really blew up again during another strong e-skip event in 1999 when I was 17. After this DX event, I was a pretty avid DX'er despite never actually keeping a logbook until October 2002 when I was 20!

Since starting my logbook, i've confirmed 622 FM stations with about 50 of them being via Sporadic E, maybe 5 of them through Meteor Scatter, 100 or so locals and semi-locals and the other 470 or so just through luck.. And a good car stereo!

 

[Slinky]

I must have been about 9. I got my first Walkman and was at my grandparents' house in Northwestern PA. To my surprise, I found I could get KYW 1060 from 300 miles away!

FM started about a year later. Again on a trip with my parents, we passed Allentown and heard Laser 104 (soon to be called WAEB-FM, then B104). When I got a new boom box I tried to get the station at home near Philadelphia so I could listen to Casey's Top 40. Surprisingly it worked! Even with a Philadelphia station on 103.9, 104.1 came in clear as a bell when the antenna was positioned correctly.

What's funny is that periodically, the station wouldn't come in as well, so knowing nothing about atmospherics, I naturally assumed my radio was broken. I remember giving it to my dad to fix many times. Now that I think about it, I wonder if he actually did anything to the radio or was just humoring me, knowing that it was just the atmosphere all along.

I got my first distant station with trop in 1994: 98YCR from York. Of course I didn't know what "trop" was at the time, but I was hooked. First E-skip was a 93.7 from Minnesota a few years later.