David Mills wrote:

Hi,

I am almost embarrassed to ask this..so basic for a group such as this
but...

what is Dxing? I hear the term DX on short wave all the time but don't know
what it means.

"Distance Listening" or simply "distance". When you tune your AM
set to the local stations, that's not DX. When you sit up some winter
night to see how far away you can get stations from, that's DX.



Finally..how long should an external antenna ultimitely be? is it the longer
the better? 10 feet? 100 feet? Is there a distance beyond which there is
deminishing returns?


Loosely (and note I said "loosely") speaking, the longer and
higher, the better. But antennas are 80% science, 20%
"what-the-hell-let's-give-it-a-shot" when it comes to SWDX. A fifty
foot wire 30 feet off the ground will probably
outperform a fifty foot wire 6 feet off the ground. Most of the time.
Insert several "if's and's and but's" here.

A 100 foot wire six feet off the ground opposed to a fifty foot wire 30
feet high? That's the kind of question that hard-core DX'ers love to
debate all night. And, of course, the listeners location, receiver and a
lot of other things figure into it,too. A fifty foot wire will pick up
signals in every band, but certain lengths (plus the halves, quarters,
eights and doubles, quadruples) of that length are specific to certain
bands - thats's where antenna "tuners" come in, and they can be very
helpful, but are usually not considered an absolute neccesity, unless
you are interested in listening to one specific band exclusively.

Bottom line: Try to use as much wire as you can, as high as you can.
But if 150' is your limit of wire, don't lie awake night thinking how
much better your reception would be if it were 175' instead of 150. The
difference in the extra 25' of wire alone would not be anything
profound.

Tony


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