DX Ruminations

A couple ponderings about DXing:

DX Clubs

Attended our area DX Club meeting last Saturday. Very interesting presentation by Mike W9MK about the T42T Cuba event. That presentation was done by Zoom and other than the specific Q&A of our specific day’s presentation, you can actually find the presentation as a YouTube available on demand.

The rest of the meeting was ritual recanting of upcoming DXpeditions, selection of two of these DXpenditions to send $200 each as a gesture of support, a 50/50 raffle which raised less than 10% of the meager monies we will be sending off, and a discussion about discussing possibly sourcing of club polo shirts.

I’m thinking most of the attendees (there were just ten) would have in their pockets many times the $40/head we just sent to DXpeditions, especially in light that everyone bought themselves breakfast and drove (in many cases some distance) to be there.

Sending $200 to a major DXpedition when projected costs are known to be six-digit seems weak. Having to raid the club treasury for each $200 seems doubly weak.

Some realities are we don’t have much for a club resource, having sold many members a Life Membership which cut off future dues income, and were approaching our spend with yesterday’s prices in our heads.

As a club we were being cheap-Charlies with our meager sponsorships.

I’d thought of offering to match the donations pledged, but knowing that might be felt as a shaming held me back.

And why donate indirectly rather than directly as a K9ZW donation?

DXpeditions cost more than money

There are a lot of risks.

Risks to body & health.  Being someplace pretty much “the end of the earth” decreases one’s odds if something bad comes up.

There there is the toll from being away so long.

One guy recounted coming back from a DXpedition to find his wife had moved out.  Doubt DXpeditioning was the only cause, though also doubt it helped the situation either.

A lot of the DXpedition are physical marathons being run by the few old timers who somehow have escaped their Canes & Walkers.  Is it a young person’s pursuit being taken up by the retired?

RIBS and other Remotes Muddy the Waters

Did you work that DX operator ?  Or did you work just some hardware that happens to be at the DX site with the operator somewhere else?  Was that DX operator out there, or out there nearby on the boat, or linked by satellite to their home country?

Have we let clever Technology drain the soul out of DXpeditions?

Not to be a spoil sport, but a Remote Operator claiming to be the DX is not a bonafide DX Operator any more than the guy I work by Satellite is a real Astronaut.

Be NOT an Alligator Station

The old adage is that “Alligator Stations have a big mouth but small ears.”

The premise is that if you can’t hear the other station your loud transmissions are useless, as you cannot complete a QSO without two-way communications.

Seeing more than the usual low numbers of Alligators on digital modes.  Calling CQ Alligator, CQ Alligator, CQ Alligator.. and my medium grade station hears dozens of other stations from around the world coming back to the Alligator without any response from the Alligator.

If you can’t hear them (or print them, in digital terms) you can’t work them.

Now perhaps these stations are on auto-pilot running station automation software that happily calls CQ for hours because the usual CQ TX Limits have been lifted.  Or the operator is just pinging CQs while tending to something local, like refueling the genset or taking a break.

Still Alligators.

We need less Alligators.  Use your station features to do the very best reception you can, and you can avoid being an Alligator too!

73

Steve
K9ZW

Inbound DX QSLs

They arrive in packets of 8-12 cards from the NIDXA bureau.

Second half of the recent arrivals

About seventy arrived, from:

• Norway
• Luxembourg
• Holland
• Belgium
• Germany
• Poland
• France
• Spain
• Italy
• Japan
• Hungary
• Denmark

The XYL is thumbing through them while having a coffee, as so many are quite interesting cards.

Afraid I’m going to pull out the confirming QSL exchanged cards, before setting the lot aside while I catch up on my self-induced QSL chaos.

73

Steve
K9ZW

Moral Conundrums – Dangerous DX

Much like yelling “jump” to someone standing on a bridge railing, is working/encouraging DXpeditions to physically dangerous destinations a morally clear thing to do?

It is also freaking expensive – a recent DXpedition trimmed short by conditions was tallied as costing almost $40 per QSO!!!

As DXers are we like the little kids playing near a busy road, daring each other to run across to the other side and back, hoping traffic doesn’t wipe someone out?  Just egging each other on, which is good fun until someone ends up hit &  hurt (or worse)?

Some have suggested we attribute an “extra risk” rating to DXPedition opportunities – where if a location is rated by how much extra risk is incurred.

Obviously taking a trek to sat St Pierre is not much more risky than normal tourism, but is obscure because the route there is complicated, whereas a DXPedition assault to Rockall in the far north Atlantic is so risky that to date only military teams have gone there.  These differing levels would get a score.

What to do with the scores is argued about – whether to even do anything more than making people aware of risks levels?

Personally I am avoiding supporting or working DXPeditions that feature noteworthy risk levels.  I’m not going to guilt myself egging folks to put themselves at risk.  Now if I happened on someone calling CQ from one of these places, I will work myself through the moral conundrum at that moment, but I’m not going to actively push people into danger zones – lest we end up with combat zone operations counting for DXCC!

73

Steve
K9ZW

Just sent out 15k QSL Cards – My QDURE Order Completed

The email arrived with the subject “Tu pedido en QDURE ya está completo” meaning my 14,888 initial QDure QSL card print run was completed and sent to bureau.

Cards complete with QSO information, printed and passed to the bureau ran about 12-1/2 cents each.

The order covered about 25,000 QSOs, as QDURE will put several QSLs with a station on the card sent on my behalf.

Now in the monitoring phase, I will be very interested in how long it takes for the cards to get to the other hams.

A couple thousand hams will get the QDURE QSL card as a second card, as I did do a lot of QSL cards manually. So be it.

73

Steve
K9ZW

UKR/RUS Ham Bans? Our Hobby isn’t the place for this.

Setting the atmosphere: In the recent series “Around the World in 80 Days” Phileas Fogg at one point was asked if as an Englishman did he dislike the French? Fogg replied affirmatively, adding “But not personally!”

Our present Reality: The Russian – Ukraine conflict, with the not actively fighting but outspoken Belarussians included, have been largely banned from amateur radio contesting and events.

Most Ukraine amateurs are off the air per the direction of their government, excepting those in the now occupied areas where the Russians are tolerating amateurs returning to the air with their original Ukrainian call signs.

Reports from Russia are mixed whether hams there are free to operate or have some limitations. Perhaps based on proximity to the conflict areas?

The war is between governments, over complex arguments that can lead one to a bias one way or the other way depending on what information you have reviewed.

It is not a war between individuals.

Yet as a hobby we have selected the hams in these countries to act as proxies for their governments.

Is that even fair on an amateur to amateur level?

Retched presumptions of whether an individual supports conflict or not have steered our response.

As a hobby we have allowed pressures-political to control our actions.

Our cultivated-outrage has been displaced from the governments involved to the people as individuals.

Years ago when I was travelling Europe as a young man, when the USA was under particular criticism, I removed my USA flag from my backpack just to tone down the conflict it brought my way.

A few years later I was accosted several times on the basis that as an American I should somehow accept “punishment by proxy.” These brave Europeans (one German and three English, in four separate incidents) were easily handled, so I was never really in much personal danger. But I was forced to respond to their violence with situation-ending controlled violence of my own, which is always a fail in my own estimation. (For the record England in big cities is really weird, in addition to these foiled attacks, I was beset upon my huffers with a knife (glue sniffers), twice attempts were made to steal my car, my house was burgled, and I foiled a police parking ticket scam as the scammer didn’t know I was on good terms with the police through some VIP protection work I helped with for my school.)

So why as a hobby are we doing our punishment-by-proxy of those who with we share the most interests?

As they say YMMV (You Mileage May Vary) in terms of whether shunning is appropriate in a hobby.

73

Steve
K9ZW