Becoming more experienced in DXing, its funny how you find yourself getting better at picking out stations of interest. I’ve learnt to now put myself in to what I call “receive mode” which means I set up the FT 1000MP to how I specifically want it and together with a good set of earphones close myself off from any outside noise and almost go in to a receive trance.
One thing I’ve noticed is a distant station has a particular sound, a sort of distant echo, I thought at first it was my receiver playing up but after researching on the web I found out this is well known and is called “artic flutter” what a wonderful term!
Now through practise I concentrate on only a particular part of the band I am working on and without thinking just slowly trawl up and down mostly with the filters set at narrow. Unfortunately I only have the standard filters on the FT which I am hoping I will be able to rectify as soon as I can afford it. Never the less even with what I currently have and putting certain skills I’ve learnt in to practise has proved very useful in picking out a very faint signal and on a number of occasions I’ve managed to get in first before the rush starts.
Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not the greatest DXer going and I won’t deliberately set out to find a particular station, I haven’t got a large beam or tower but with the setup I have I am able to just amble slowly along the band to find a VK, J or ZL who is calling CQ. However with my newly made 10m Moxon which is currently pointing west, (I have no rotator at the moment), I can pick out a lot more faint stations than with the cobweb and this is proving fascinating and giving me a better insight in to why DXing is so popular.
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