Tag: dx

  • Two-Radio Diversity Receive: Reducing QRM Without a Second Antenna

    Part of our Getting On The Air guide. Diversity receive is a technique borrowed from serious contest and DX stations, using a second antenna and receiver simultaneously to fight noise and interference in a way a single antenna simply cannot. The Core Idea Local noise and interference often affect two physically separated antennas differently, since…

  • Worked All Continents (WAC): The Other Big Award

    Part of our Getting On The Air guide. Worked All Continents sits in an interesting spot between Worked All States and DXCC: harder to complete than WAS since it requires genuine international contacts, but far more achievable than full DXCC since you only need six confirmations, not over a hundred. What WAC Actually Requires The…

  • Vertical vs Yagi vs Wire for DX: A Decision Framework

    Part of our Building Your First Ham Radio Station guide. Every antenna thread on every ham radio forum eventually turns into an argument about which is best for DX, and the honest answer is that all three of these can work DX, and all three have real tradeoffs. I want to walk through how I…

  • 1923: The HF DX Breakthrough That Changed Everything

    Part of our The Evolution of Amateur Radio timeline series. Remember that the government handed amateurs the shortwave spectrum above 1.5 MHz back in 1912 because they figured it was useless for anything but local contacts. In 1923, hams proved everyone wrong, and in the process turned amateur radio from a local curiosity into a…

  • Working DX Pileups and Split Operation on the FTX-1

    How to set up and work split on the FTX-1, and the pileup habits that actually get you through faster.

  • 10 Meters: Amazing When It’s Open, and Why It So Rarely Is

    10 meters can deliver worldwide DX on a handheld sized antenna and a handful of watts. The catch is that it only works when the ionosphere cooperates, and that is not often.

  • The “Pay to Confirm” Problem: DX Stations Charging for QSL Confirmations

    There is a growing frustration in the DX community over stations, mostly in rare or hard to reach entities, who ask for money before they will confirm a contact. Here is what is going on, and why it matters.

  • 40 Meters: The Band Many Hams Live On

    Part of our Getting On The Air: Modes, Operations, and Making Contacts guide. If I had to give up every HF band but one, 40 meters is the one I would keep. It is not the flashiest band, it does not have the wide open DX magic of 20 or 10 meters on a good…

  • Why 15 Meters Deserves More Attention

    Stuck between the reliability of 20 meters and the volatility of 10, 15 meters gets overlooked. It shouldn’t be.

  • 6 Meters: The Magic Band, Explained

    6 meters earned its nickname honestly. It behaves like HF one day and VHF the next, and nobody can fully predict when it will do either.

  • DXing 101: Working Rare Entities Without a Big Antenna Farm

    You don’t need a tower and a beam to chase DX. Here’s how to actually start working rare countries with a modest station, and where your time is best spent.

  • QSLing and Awards 101: Paper Cards, LoTW, eQSL, and DXCC

    A confirmed contact is only as good as the system that confirms it. Here is how paper QSLs, LoTW, and eQSL actually differ, and how awards like DXCC use them.

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