The Philip B. Petersen Collection Broadcast October 29, 1988

DX and Modes of Operation

     Well, today I'm going to talk to you about an aspect of amateur radio that a lot of radio amateurs enjoy and that is to talk to as many different stations around the world as they can.  It started out from the early days when people just didn't believe that that little box that you had in the corner way back 60 or 70 years ago could do anything, not even talk around the corner.  But as time went on, radio amateurs were looking for proof that the fellow they would talk to would send them a card to show that he talked to him.  This became known as a QSL card.  Part of the Q signals we have in the international code so you can talk to any nation who has a radio amateur, we can use Q signals and we all understand what it means.  It's almost like using what we call "pidgin" English, where you have to use very short phrases.  QSL means please confirm.  So these QSL cards are mailed now by the thousands, daily, all over the globe from radio amateurs between countries.  A lot of radio amateurs get a real kick out of getting QSL cards from rare places around the earth.  Little islands in the Pacific, Antarctica, up around the North Pole from the recent expedition we just had and all of that.  They try to get as many stations and confirmation that they've talked to those places throughout the world.  They try to do it on different bands of frequencies using different techniques.  Some via satellite, some via the short wave bands and some via the microwave frequencies.  One of my friends here recently was on a microwave frequency we call 10,000 megacycles, which is very very high frequency in the microwave region.  We're starting to pioneer in that aspect.
     Another type of communication mode that has been coming forward very rapidly in the last ten or fifteen years, but it has been pioneered for 30 or 40 years, is called repeater operation.  This is a case where your little transmitter that you're carrying in your pocket sends out a signal to a nearby transmitter which raises the power level and transmits that signal out to about 50 miles or so.  At the current time in the United States alone, there are over 11,000 of these repeaters.  They're generally put on the air by amateur radio clubs, but some of them are private individuals, to extend the range of communications.  On these things, there are probably a lot of you who've heard them on your scanners that pick up the police radio.  They're in the same general range of frequencies of the police.  Radio amateurs can use them to make phone calls as long as it isn't for commercial purposes to almost anyplace you might want the telephone to take you.  There are a lot of networks on these groups, public service networks and so on.
     One of the groups I'm concerned with is the Quarter Century Wireless Association.  This is a group of radio amateurs worldwide now, consisting of radio amateurs who have been licensed for at least 25 years in time and we have a little more in common with the older days of radio.  I run a net, a news net, we call the Homebrew News Net Tuesday night on one of the local stations.  My call letters are W2DME over this repeater and the frequency is on 147.045 megacycles.  This is located in Asbury Park.  Every Tuesday night at 10 o'clock you can hear a little bit of what we call the homebrew news which has to do with amateur radio activities mainly around the state of New Jersey but a bit about the national aspects of amateur radio.

October 29, 1988

** Broadcasts recordings preserved and presented here by Mr. Robert Buss and Mr. Bernie Ricciardi, Phil's friends and fellow Marconi Chapter 138 QCWA members **

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