G’day all
Some food for thought.
Like Roger G3YRO and others who were teenage UK radio amateurs in the
1960s/1970s I grew up radio-wise on 160m. In those days, the holy grail was to
work across the Atlantic from UK/Europe.
Nowadays, living in Western Australia, it seems quite funny to think that
working from Europe to into the east coast of North America is something that
is still considered as real DX working on topband, as the distance is not
relatively long and there is no shortage of stations (in theory!) at either
end.
Back in the late 1960s/early 1970s, UK stations (and others in Europe) could
only legally use 10W DC input, so working this distance was really difficult
and thus ‘serious DX’. However, as the 1970s progressed, there were TL-922
linear amplifiers in use at various G-DXers (but of course, ahem, never on
160m).
Some years after this, 400W output became both legal and commonplace below
1832KHz in the UK.
Anyhow, my point is that the distance from Europe/the UK to east coast USA is
relatively short – from the UK’s Newcastle Upon Tyne (where Roger lives) to New
York is about 3,330 miles (about 5,360 km) as the crow flies.
This is a very similar distance from Perth, Western Australia to Auckland, New
Zealand – but no serious Southern Hemisphere topband DXer would consider a
contact between VK6 and ZL1 as a DX contact. 😉
On the other hand, Perth to Newcastle Upon Tyne is 9,056 miles (14,574 km)
while New York to Perth is 11,613 miles (18,690km). That to me is DX. But
Australia (Perth in particular) is a long way away from anywhere else.
All a question of perspective, history and where you live I guess. 😉
Vy 73
Steve, VK6VZ/G3ZZD/VY2LF
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