WQSN 1660 Kalamazoo MI dominating freq at 0823 ET
Saturday, February 21 2004
At 05:55 PM 2/20/2004 -0800, Earl Higgins wrote:
Lynn, I wouldn't mind helping out with this kind of thing. Do you have a
standard
letter you send? How do you explain our unusual hobby to radio stations,
who of
course generally are in it just for the money (but not always,
admittedly). Earl
It depends on the station. For some, I have a contact name, or know a
person at that station who is a DXer, so a lot of an explanation of our
hobby is redundant, and most of the time, those people will understand
without me having to go into detail what I'm looking for when I say "DX
test". For those, about all I have to ask is the date/time, format, power,
will code or tones be used to ID, and QSL address/website address.
But there are others who in this day and age have never heard of a "DX
test" and have no notion that people like DXers exist. I've had some
stations say they have no idea why someone would want to listen to
something like a code ID slipped in at the TOH, but it seems like good
community PR, so they'll do it. It wasn't all that long ago, less that 10
years, I think, that many stations had a station engineer for their
station, and more often than not these people were ham radio operators and
they understood what was desired - but these days, again more often than
not, a letter or e-mail gets to the station's secretary who, since lots of
stations are all automated or all syndicated programming, finds it
non-applicable in that there's no one to fulfill the request and files it
away. I remember another DXer telling me, years ago, that even if a station
couldn't confirm your reception, they'd reply to you - that was why you
always sent return postage with your report. I noticed thru the years that
more and more stations just plain didn't reply, postage or not, regardless
of whether I'd sent a letter or an e-mail. And these days I can send out
(via e-mail or snail mail) dozens of requests and be lucky to get one
response. Don't get me wrong, there ARE stations out there that will run DX
tests and QSL, but these days they're few and far between!
If you'd like to help, I'd sure appreciate it - and I'm sure other DXers
would as well - there's strength in numbers! If you would like a "standard"
sort of way to explain a DX test, look at
http://www.ircaonline.org/dxtests.txt - the "standard" letter I send out
has a lot of information from that in it. As far as explaining DXing goes,
I've seen some good explanations put out by several people; what I usually
say is something along the lines of "DXing - the hobby of hearing distant
stations on the standard AM Broadcast Band" - I think that gives a pretty
good idea of it if you need something short!
Lynn.
Lafayette, LA
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