"Michael Black" wrote in message
...


But DX can't be an absolute.

Think of VHF, where distant communication is rare or dependent on fancy
techniques. So you normally only hear or talk to local stations. Then
along comes good radio conditions, and you can suddenly hear that station
which isn't particularly far away, but beyond normal reception. Suddenly,
that 300 or whatever mile away station is DX, because it's further than
local.

Or "What's your best DX?". For the beginner, it may not be very far,
because they've not gotten to the distant stations. But since it is
something he's not heard before, it is DX.

Michael


This DX definition question has been a burden to me. Sure, the D in DX must
mean distance. But the more I thought about it, the less sure I became.
Although Australia is about as far away from the US as could be, listening
to 9580 in the morning hardly seems like DXing. Still, you can't get much
more D than that. The question has had it's effect on my sleep. After
several hours of tossing and turning, I opened my eyes to see a short man in
an expensive three piece suit. "You must be David Sarnoff!" I exclaimed.

Sarnoff beamed with joy. "After all these years, I thought only lunatics
would remember me!" He continued talking. "You know, there's a way out of
this DX conundrum. The D is distance. But we don't use a T for
transmissions, we use an X. The term DX isn't perfect."

"I haven't looked it in that way" I replied, "But I don't see your point."

Sarnoff continued, "The term DX is already corrupted. If a letter such as X
can symbolize transmission, why must D mean distance? Can't it mean
difficult? Can't DXing mean listening to difficult to hear signals?"

"Very impressive" I was still just a bit skeptical. "But this might be
more change than radio hobbyists can accept."

Sarnoff flashed a wicked grin. "One day ARRL stood for the Amateur Radio
Relay League. Now, ARRL stands for The National Association for Amateur
Radio!"

I then realized all the stories about Sarnoff were true. "You really are a
genius!!"

"I do have a way with words" said Sarnoff. "I appeared before Larry Magne
and told him that worldband was an even better word for shortwave than
shortwave."

"Man, you're one of the best!" I enthused.

Sarnoff replied coldly "I've been at the top of the game since I was a young
hotshot telegraph operator with American Marconi."

"Hey, Dave!" Sarnoff winced as I called him Dave, "You relayed the first to
last messages during the Titanic sinking and the rescue. 72 hours
straight!"

Sarnoff nodded.

"That's an incredible story!" I found the historical record lacking, and
now I had the chance to fill in the gaps. "Your American Marconi relay
station was in a department store. Your relay station kept the same hours
as the store. The Titanic's first reports came out while the store was
closed. How could you have known about the disaster in time for the first
message? How did you get to the station? Did you have the keys to the
store? That's sure alot of responsibility for a young man!"

Sarnoff stood silent, nervously fingering the grape sized diamond on his
pinky ring.

"And there were so many stations on the air during the emergency that
American Marconi silenced some them to reduce interference. Your station
was one of those shut down. How did you stay on the air? Did you have your
own pirate station?"

He said "Well, there's really not much more to say."

I knew Sarnoff was many things, but he was not modest. Who was this
intruder? Suddenly, my blood ran cold. I instinctively grabbed my bedside
copy of The Radio Engineer's Handbook with one hand and affixed a cross
reference manual to the other.

"IN THE NAME OF FRED TERMAN I ORDER YOU GONE, DEMON!!!"

The Sarnoff Demon was stunned. But no radionic evil can stand up to the
power of the Good Book and an invocation of Terman. The Sarnoff Demon
disappeared in a cloud of selenium rectifier smoke.


I came so close to the fall. I had almost been seduced by the easy way.
I'm going to stick with hard line DX fundamentalism from now on. D means
Distance. Nothing else.

But what distance defines DX? We need a definition which will stand for all
time, past present and future. In the pioneering days of radio, just over
100 years ago, 50 miles was a long haul. I think that's an excellent place
to fix our strict definition of DX.

50 miles.

Frank Dresser