Topband: Working 'long' distances on 160m

[Steve Ireland]

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

Sent from Mail for Windows 10



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