DX QSO
[The last renewal of this page: January 18, 1998]
1. DX QSO
There are many books, magazines and WEB Page on "DX QSO". In those
medias, "DX" is treated as "Hunting". (DX = Hunting) "Hunting" means
"Award hunting", and most of them refer to "DXCC hunting". That's very
normal to see that those who started amateur radio get interested in HF
operations, and there in HF, they understand DXing means Hunting, the
result of which, is to become hunters themselves as well. And not all
(Definitly not all) of them, but many of them get involved in competing
with other peoples.
I would never deny award huntings, especially DXCC-hunting. As a matter
of fact, I had an occasion chasing DXs seriously in the past. But I
finally recognized myself that I was involved in a sad competition with
other peoples. I was shocked when I found myself that the amateur radio
was not giving me positive effect to myself in character building and my
life.
DX means "Distance QSO", and that is to have contacts with people living
far away. Generally, this means contacts in HF bands where the communi-
cation via ionosphere is realized. (Recent technology allows us to use
satellite for DX-QSO. The word DX-QSO is also used as wider meaning for
marginal distance contact on UHF.)
DX QSO means a contact with the stations far away with which we never
could make contact with a ground wave on UHF. That is, a special rights
given to only hams with which one can brush up and make rich himself and
his life getting beyond his own society and culture. QSO like in "59,
QSL?" is OK, as well as DXCC and other awards hunting. However, I feel
it so hard for me to just stand with seeing a tendency of the "DX = DXCC"
only spreads out in the world.
"DX QSO" is not where we compete with people. That is a romantic place
where we meet with people in the world by enjoying contacts, exchanging
friendships to make ourseves and our life rich and wealthy.
2. Propagation
The "DX" should not be equal to the DXCC, however, what is needed here is
a PacketCluster.(Please refer to the Packet Page for the detailed infor-
mations about the PacketCluster)
The PacketCluster forms a big group of DXers, and is a network where you
can get realtime informations regarding an operation of DX stations from
rare countries. However, this is not all what you can get from there.
Especially, one on a radio, not like WebClusters, provides many advan-
tages. You can exchange e-mails and TALKS(a realtime message exchange)
with the stations on the net to exchange friendships. You just wait,
and there you have a lot of SPOT informations, which are one of the best
informations to know the propagations in all bands! Not only for those
who are chasing DXs, but also for those who are enjoying DX-Ragchew QSOs,
it is really helpful, like; "Oh! A spain is coming through on 20m! Here
we go!"
A Webcluster is a PacketCluster on the Internet. You can only get infor-
mations regarding operations of DX stations, however, the advantage there
is the net is really Worldwide.
3. DX Expedition
Among the DX expeditions being held in a place where there is very few
activities of ham(or none), expeditions with brave adventure fighting
agaist the nature do not take just little part of them. They are
absolutely man's roman and dream, and we can not stop exciting ourselves.
Recent trend of chasing new Awards such as IOTA will make expeditions
more active in future.
Well, other than those expeditions being done seriously with a backgroud
of terrible DXing competitions, there are another type of DX expeditions
with a backgroud of idea simply to enjoy DX-QSOs. This kind of
expeditions are done by peoples who are saving money with a lot of effort
to enjoy a portable operations flying abroad in their vacations. I have
been impressed those peoples from many years ago, and I have been looking
for something that I could help them. I finally decided to build a log
database with a search engine here in my sight to support them. Your
records will be shown with simple actions, so if you have worked them, try
it right now!
In case you hit this
page directly from a Search Engine, you can reach to all of the pages of MAFNET from Top Page