When Were You First Aware of Distant Stations?

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Re: When Were You First Aware of Distant Stations?

Postby VE7ROX » Tue Dec 13, 2011 2:07 pm

Re: When Were You First Aware of Distant Stations?

Yes, I recall going to a hobby show back in elementary school. Jon Pearkins (we both went to the same school in East Burnaby) had a couple of tables set up with radios surrounded by QSL cards. I was quite taken in by what I saw there, and I guess you could say I was bitten by the radio bug. I had tuned up and down the radio dial previous to that, and was intrigued by the weaker stations that I heard in between the stronger local ones. Seeing other people pursuing this as a hobby, such as sending away for QSL cards and reading Radio/Electronics magazines, really got the ball rolling. We had a radio club going, called the BDXC (Burnaby DX Club). I noticed the difference, on the radio dial, between daytime, sunset, and night-time. During the night, I would hear stations such as WWL 870 in New Orleans and XELO 800 in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. That is probably what got me hooked on the DX, as I eventually started to pick up the more difficult to hear stations on the regional channels, and also the graveyard channels of 1230, 1240, 1340, 1400, 1450 and 1490 KHz.

Built up a nice collection of QSL cards and verification letters. Got into FM DXing as well. There were a lot fewer FM stations on the dial in those days, and in a high-elevation area you could hear stations well down into Washington State.
One time I was up on Thorne Hill in Maple Ridge, and heard KZEL FM 96.1 in Eugene, Oregon. Sent away for a QSL card, and they must have been quite intrigued by being heard in Canada, as they sent me posters, surveys, stickers (and a QSL card), and all sorts of other items. Anyway, still doing lots of DXing, whether it be on the car radio or a portable one such as the C Crane CC radio. Low-power stations can be interesting also. Anyone crossing Lions Gate Bridge or within 1 to 2 kilometers of Park Royal mall should be able to hear "Park Royal Radio" on 92.5 FM. They are broadcasting Christmas music mixed with mall information. Have heard them as far east as Lonsdale Avenue and the Seabus terminal. On 98.7 FM, the hillbilly station can be heard quite consistently throughout the Lower Mainland. I have heard them as far away as Horseshoe Bay, and at sea level on the Seabus terminal. They can be received like a local station in certain spots, depending on where the car is parked. If you have heard of daytime-only stations, this one is the opposite, a night-time-only station. Anyway, best of DX . . . :northpole:
RoX ToX in the dialog BoX . . . Bye, Jim VE7ROX
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Re: When Were You First Aware of Distant Stations?

Postby Tape Splicer » Tue Dec 13, 2011 4:31 pm

I saw this site a number of years ago - It is a SW receiver that can be tuned remotely - give it a try and see what you can receive. (and get your fix QRM)
The web page is titled " The Original Web-controlled Shortwave Radio"

The link is below.
http://www.chilton.com/scripts/radio/R8-receiver
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Re: When Were You First Aware of Distant Stations?

Postby radiofan » Tue Dec 13, 2011 6:29 pm

The first out of town radio station I recall listening to was KGO in October of 1962, the night of Typhoon Freda. I had a Rogers Majestic AM/SW transistor radio and was going across the dial looking for
more information on the storm that was headed towards Vancouver that night. Ira Blu was on doing his show from The Hungry "I". The show that night was a mix of callers calling in from up and down the
West Coast (from the Bay Area to Vancouver) talking about the damage this storm was doing as it made it's way northward.

Other than a bit of listening to stations like KJR, KOL, KYMN and a few others, I didn't know about DX until the hobby show at our school in 1965 that VE7ROX mentioned above.

As Dan mentioned in an earlier post, the DXing for stations from home while on vacation was always fun. I can recall listening to CKLG most nights in Los Angeles and Palm Springs along with Spokane's
powerhouse Top 40 KGA 1510 at Easter 1968.

DXing now isn't as much fun with local programming and music long gone from most AM stations. It was always fun to hear what tunes were being played in Oklahoma City, Chicago, Portland or any other
number of cities. You'd always hear something that wasn't being played locally. I still enjoy going across the dial to see what's coming in, but haven't sent for a QSL card for years.
Those who danced were thought to be quite insane by those who couldn't hear the music.
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Re: When Were You First Aware of Distant Stations?

Postby Eldon-Mr.CFAY » Tue Dec 13, 2011 7:24 pm

Hi Everyone, Great to see more people reporting on this topic! Again I find it very interesting. Great to see Jim VE7ROX report in on Radio West. You did a great job on describing your early dx activities. Also good to read what RadioFan reported. Knowing RadioFan all these years I didn't realize that KGO was one of the first distant stations you heard. My Dad started listening to KGO way back in the mid-60s, perhaps around 1965. He used to listen to CJOR and CKNW but for a change of pace he liked listening to KGO and the Ira Blue show from the Hungry Eye Rest. in San Francisco. I never was a real big KGO Fan in the 1960s but later on in the 1990s and 2000s really listened a lot to it. I*m very sad that a big corporate entity like Cumulus changed the format to All-News and Satellite Red Eye Show overnight. Its just not the same station without the lively local talk shows. A lot of people in San Francisco and along the entire west coast are pretty angry about it!!!! KGO has always been local and news=talk, now Cumulus who bought all of Citadel in Sept. 2011 including KGO and KSFO has copied successful KCBS 740 which has been all-news and traffic for years, they are all local though. Anyway latest on it is that KSCO 1080 Santa Cruz, California (just south of San Francisco) owner Michael Zwerling has invited all KGO listeners to tune in to KSCO and he has given an open invitation to all fired talk show hosts from KGO to join a warm-hearted owned local station. He refers to Cumulus as a bunch of cold hearted corporate weasels!!!!! Check out the KSCO website for more. KSCO is a local independant talk and news station. They do carry some network talk but sounds like they want to go more local talk and fill the void left by recent format changes at KGO. KSCO is on 1080 AM with 10,000 watts. I think they might drop to 5000 watts at night. I have heard them up here in B.C. at night a couple of times but its hard because Portland, Oregon has a station on 1080-which is all-sports I think. (used to be KWJJ 1080 country, still have some of the old country surveys).

I really like dxing but like RadioFan said there is certainly not as much local programming or music on AM like in the old days of the 1960s to early 1980s. A lot of the smaller stations are local but some are daytime only or low powered and very difficult to hear in southwest B.C.. Thats why I listen to those that stream on my Grace wi-fi radios. I wish I could pick some of them up over-the-air dxing but stations like KMRC 1430 Morgan City, Louisiana (with only 500 watts) are just too difficult with present equipment even good receivers and antennas. I suppose you might get them in other parts of Canada but quite a few other stations on this channel 1430. Same goes for other local programmed USA stations like WAWK 1140 Kendallville, Indiana, WHVW 950 Hyde Park, New York etc. .. I could go on and on about them but basically the local stations with a lot of local programming from the USA are more difficult to hear certainly from Greater Vancouver. A couple that you can hear well that are all local are KOMO 1000 Seattle and KITI 1420 Chehalis, Wash. (nice oldies format and local). KMAS 1030 comes in at night from Shelton, Washington fairly well in Langley and Fraser Valley. They are local and have an oldies format as well as local sports. In Canada the AM stations we have left are practically all local programmed even if you don't like some of the big corporate ones!!!! Two that come to mind that are independant and seem to do a good job locally are CKDM 730 Dauphin, Manitoba and CKYL 610 Peace River, Alberta. Also I don't mind CHNL 610 Kamloops either. I*m very interested in that new 960 AM which is independant and going to be Local News and INfo. for Mississauga, Ontario. Now theres an interesting target for dxing since the power is not that high!!! It would be very difficult to get them here in Greater Vancouver with 960 Calgary blasting in most nights at 50,000 watts though. However with a good directional loop antenna hooked up to a good receiver you might just get them in the wee hours of morning around 3 AM if conditions are good to Ontario. I still haven't heard CKDO 1580 Oshawa here but had a tentative on them.

Anyway better post this, so good dxing to all during the fall/winter 2011/2012!!!!
Bye . . Mr. CFAY "Frequently On The Frequency"
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Re: When Were You First Aware of Distant Stations?

Postby Anotherwpgguy » Tue Dec 13, 2011 8:19 pm

I wish I had the time to do this topic justice.

My dad was interested in radio, and my grandfather owned a very small radio manufacturing company in the 1920's. In my collection of family memorabilia, I have one of his radio catalogs.

Dad had a nice Hallicrafters SX-28A around the house starting when I was about maybe 8 years old. My mom used to listen to the Bud Guest Show from WJR in Detroit every morning ... about 200 miles away. At night dad would be tuning around and listening to New York, Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Fort Wayne, and Wheeling, West Virginia. When we would be in the car at night, he would be tuned to something hundreds and hundreds of miles away, explaining how the ionosphere worked.

I got to use the SX-28A a lot and began listening to international shortwave stations from all over the world. Among my dozens of high-zoot radios, I now own a nicely restored SX-28A with a huge speaker, and it puts out a knockout sound with a pair of 6V6's in push-pull in the output stage. Too bad there isn't anything to listen to any more. For the geeky among us ... here's a link to some SX-28 info ... mine is in this kind of condition ... http://www.qsl.net/wa2whv/hallicrafters.html

So from a very early age, I was well aware of long range listening, and participated using my own WW2 bomber radio in my bedroom ... a Bendix RA-10DB radio navigation receiver that dad converted to run on 110 volts and I had a longwire antenna in the yard. For hundreds and hundreds of hours, I listened to 550 WGR, 77 WABC, 800 CKLW, 980 CFPL, 89 WLS, ....... and the list is almost endless of super-powerful stations, and the weak ones that were real catches. I collected QSL cards and still have them in a large envelope.

In grade 8, when other kids were doing their classroom speech projects on their dogs, or something inane, my speech was about short wave listening ... brought in a radio, set up about 15 feet of wire, tuned in to the BBC in the 15 Mc band and had the class listen to the chime of Big Ben....hand out some of my QSL cards from all around the world, and everything was going great until I brought out cards from Radio Havana Cuba, and Radio Moscow. Then I got sent to the Principal's office where I got the crap beaten out of me for supposedly spreading Communism in school ... I shit you not. It was not the last time I was to suffer for radio .... LOL.

Then I began to study the structure of radio ... and I really became enthralled with Scot Muni and Cousin Brucie on WABC. WLS also got a lot of listening time, as did WBZ Boston. For a small town, WOWO Fort Wayne pounded into SW Ontario and had lots of listeners in my age bracket. When I discovered CKLW, I became hooked. By the time I was 15, I was listening to CKLW almost every waking hour. About 5 years later, I was able to work at "The Big 8," and it changed my life forever.

Around 14, I started studying code and theory to become a ham radio operator. I owe a great debt of gratitude to my mentor Stan Whiteford .... VE3BVL for countless hours of patiently teaching and drilling my childhood buddy Randy Chamberlain and I on Morse Code and theory as he would explain receiver design to us, have us draw schematics, calculate component values, and then read a chapter from The Radio Amateur's Handbook. I dragged over lots of old discarded radios and he would show me how to troubleshoot the problem and get something that had been tossed in the garbage working. I was to do my ham radio test in The Soo as my own Centennial Project in 1967 and I continue to get a great deal of enjoyment from the science of radio propagation.

Then when I had just turned 15, my mother arranged for me to meet the Chief Engineer for CKOX, 1340 Woodstock .... and we went out to the transmitter site. As soon as I saw that RCA transmitter with the blue mercury vapour rectifiers flashing with modulation peaks, the pair of 4-400's glowing away with hotter plates than I could have ever conceived, I was hooked and knew what I wanted to be able to do ... I wanted to be "the radio guy" that made it possible for thousands of people to hear the hits.

And .... I did.

Then I wanted to get on-air, although darned near petrified when I opened the mike for a long time due to self consciousness.

Eventually, on air, production, and supervisory/leadership roles took over from technical, but I still get a kick out of saying I've done every job in a radio station from wiring up the AC feedline into the building and building studios, to being successful on-air, to adjusting the phasing hut impedance matching networks at the transmission sites ... then explaining to people how the various layers of the ionosphere allowed long distance transmissions to the receiver site ... and then figure out everything including the strength of the pressure wave from the speaker to your eardrum.

What a great run in a super-interesting business.

Thanks for the memories folks .... I could go on for hours.

73 de anotherwpgguy
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Re: When Were You First Aware of Distant Stations?

Postby Big Voice » Wed Dec 14, 2011 1:15 am

Thanks for bringing back great memories. The first station I picked up was in Idaho.
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