 logs |
links |
Asian
Dx news |
Netbuying
for Indian Dxers |
| logs |
links |
Asian
Dx news |
Netbuying
for Indian Dxers |
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DXing after a decade ! It feels good to be back to active DX after over a decade.It feels like what the legendary Rip Van Winkle felt.The internet has made so much of an impact to our Hobby. Online schedules, online tips, online Dx chat, online tecnical brochures, online buying, online Dx magazines and even online radio stations ! The good old postman who was the DXers life line then is now called "snail mail".No more waiting for a week for that Favourite Media Network or Sweden Calling DXers or waiting for months for the qsls and the schedules and magazines like Gelnn Hausers DXLD. It is all there for a mouse click.The receiver scenario has changed. Unlimited memories on the receiver cut out the need to scribble down your favourite frequencies, four decimal place frequency readout leaves no room for guessing, digital signal processor(DSP) units silence that nasty het and twin pass band tuning (twin PBT) pulls up that faint Cambodian station - all packed into a small three kilo receiverbox . It is a far cry from the stuttering AR 88 of 1945 make which had 16 valves and weighed some 40 kilos or even the bulky SONY 2001 of 1985. But what had not changed - I still enjoyed stringing the copper wire over my neighbours house because without it all of the high tech gizmos would come to a nought. The Vietnamese stations were still whispering and drifting, the AIR stations still had those unmistakble modullation and Radio Nacionale Amazonia still came in with those flourish Portugese announcements and jingles in that small two hour morning listening window. Inspite of all your resources you still wondered if that broaken piece of Swahili was from Tanzania or from the external service of Radio Korea !The jammers were of a different tone but were still chasing the clandestines and the good old utilities including the CW morse, the RTTY ,the SSB voices from all around us and the fascimile tones were all very much there.Then some had changed a little - Radio RSA was now calling itself Channell africa and had the new signature tune which was built very much upon that old structure.BBC world serld service had so many more regional variants in English that the parallel transmissions were confusing.Radio Free Europe/Raldio Liberty facilities in Europe in the post cold war inactivity had added Radio Free Iraq to its bouquet of channels. What had not changed ? I still sat through the night with head phones on my ear and staring at the glowing backlit LCD screen , listening to that new Somali station and trying to imagine what it would be like in Somalia - just as I did as a school boy in 1976 as I managed to tune to Radio Sweden, my first exotic DX station. Supratik Sanatani
More on my DX past |
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