VE3SRE.COM

Ham radio operators love chasing "DX" stations.   What's a DX station?   Any station that's far away!

What's considered "DX" changes from band to band.   On the HF bands, amongst Canadian and U.S. operators, any station outside of North America is generally considered to be "DX".  Parts of the world where there isn't a lot of ham radio activity are considered "rare DX".   In fact sometimes ham radio operators go on "dxpeditions" just to put a rare part of the world on the air!

HF radio propagation is highly dependent on the weather...but not the weather here on planet Earth...but rather the weather on the sun.

The sun has an eleven year sunspot cycle and the last "peak" occurred around 1999-2000.   As of this writing (2006) we're getting close to the bottom of the cycle when sunspot activity is low.

In general, the higher HF bands (20, 17, 15, 12 and 10 meters) work best at the peak of the cycle.  The lower HF bands (30,40,80 and 160 meters) tend to propagate best over long distances towards the bottom of the cycle.

Of course there are changes from day to day in the solar weather.   There can even be solar storms at the bottom of the sunspot cycle.   There are seasonal changes as well.   So there are alot of variables to take into account!

On the VHF/UHF bands, "DX" is any station that's beyond your normal "groundwave" range.   You usually will need some kind of "oddball" radio propagation like "Sporadic-E skip", tropospheric ducting, meteor scatter, aurora skip etc. to make contact with distant stations.   At the peak of the cycle, you'll find days where the 50 MHz. (six meter) band starts to act like an HF band and will propagate "across the pond" into Europe and elsewhere.

What's one of the best ways to work rare and exotic DX stations?   Get on the air during amateur radio contests!    There's a certain "contest effect" that happens on weekends.   Operators that are often inactive at other times of the year will get on the air during major contests.   As well, many ham radio operators will go on "dxpeditions" during major contests in order to activate areas that are normally inactive.

Here are some sites that can help you in your "DX Chasing":

PROPAGATION

University of Alaska Geophysical Institute Aurora Forecasts
Auroral Activity Report from spacew.com
DK3XT's Aurora Links
Bill Hepburn's VHF/UHF Tropo Ducting Forecast Site - The latest forecast on tropospheric ducting conditions!
N0HR Firefox Addon -  This is an extension available for the Mozilla Firefox web browser that will display the latest solar forecast (solar flux, A and K indexes) in the lower right-hand corner of your web browser. 
Kingston Amateur Radio Club's Radio Propagation Links

DX CLUSTERS

VE9WH Telnet DX Cluster Links - This is a great collection of "telnet" links to dxclusters around the world!

If you have not enabled "Telnet" as a registered protocol in your web browser (and doing this is a little complicated), you can telnet into a dxcluster the "old-fashioned" way by going to a "Command Prompt" (DOS Window) on your Window$ computer or using a terminal programme on Linux/Unix or a Mac.

At the prompt just enter the command "telnet".    That will take you to a telnet prompt.  On the next line just type "o nameofclustersite".    The "o" just means "open".   You'll then be asked for your callsign and a password.   If you're signing on for the first time you might be asked for things like your location, etc.

There are some advantages to telnetting into the dxcluster over using a website-based dxcluster.  First of all the telnet programme doesn't use much in the way of computer resources.   This is a good thing if you happen to have an old slow computer.    Secondly, since the data traffic between your computer and the telnet site is all "straight text", and doesn't consume much of your internet connection.  This is handy when you are stuck with a dial-up connection.

If your computer isn't being tied up and your internet connection isn't being tied up it leaves you free to do other things on your computer while you're watching the telnet dxcluster in the background!

VE2PKT Webcluster -  You will need to have Java enabled in your web browser

OH2AQ'S "DX SUMMIT" WEBCLUSTER - This is the world's premier webcluster site based in Finland

137 KHz	1.8 MHz.	3.5 MHz.	7 MHz.
10 MHz.	14 MHz.	18 MHz.	21 MHz.
24 MHz.	28 MHz.	50 MHz.	70 MHz.
144 MHz.	430 MHz.	1.2 GHz.	10 GHz.
Last 25 WWV Reports	Satellite Spots	Search Database	Submit a DX Spot

DX MAPS

Southern Canada/USA Grid Square Map  -  Maidenhead Grid Square map used for VHF/UHF awards and contests
Western & Central Europe Grid Square Map - Maidenhead Grid Square map used for VHF/UHF awards and contests.
World-Wide Grid Square Map  (by JF9EXF)
CQ "Zone Map" - (by JF9EXF) Map of the 40 "CQ Zones" used for CQ's "Worked All Zones" Award and for the CQ World-Wide DX Contests
ITU "Zone Map" - (by JF9EXF) Map of the 75 "ITU Zones" used for the IARU Contest
Online Ham Radio World Map
World Amateur Radio Prefix Maps - (by VK2CA)

DX LISTS

DXCC Counties List
IOTA (Island on the Air) List

DX Newsletters

425 DX News - RSS feeds and audio version available
OPDX
DXNL
ARRL DX BULLETIN

QSL INFO

After you've worked that "exotic" DX station, you'll want to confirm the contact with a QSL card.  Here are some sites that can help:

E-QSL Service  - Send and Receive Electronic QSL Cards
K3WWP's QSL Routes - An extensive list of links to callbooks, qsl route lists, qsl route servers etc.
QSL Info.de
AC6V's Callbook and QSL Route List
QSL Info from "The Daily DX"
HDXA QSL Route Lookup Page
IK4LZH QSL Lookup Page

W4INF's Callsign Lookup Extensions for Firefox - Andrew Daniel W4INF has created some terrific ham radio "search plugins" for the Mozilla Firefox web browser.   With a couple of mouse clicks you can easily add on callsign look-ups for QRZ.com, Hamcall.net, FCC.gov and ARRL.org

You can  also  search  the classifieds on  QTH.com

Why are you  still  using  Internet  Explorer???

QRZ callsign lookup:   Callsign lookups provided by qrz.com

feedback@ve3sre.com