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Editor's Note: This year we are treated to an original DX story by one of our own. Terry, W8JE shares his views as to what it really takes to be a true DXer. As a "Little Pistol" myself, I can relate...W5UE
By Terry Jones, W8JE
I cannot think about DX without at some point remembering one of the greatest DXers, whom I am both deeply honored and humbled to say is also my first Elmer. DX and the original W8EX, SK, are forever synonymous to me. He was one of the few who had literally "worked 'em all". I recall as a child, how I marveled at his antenna farm, spread across 40 acres in a field behind his house. W8EX, Doc, was our veterinarian, and his QTH was located on the main highway that led into town. So I was treated to the impressive monobander stacks (40 through 6 meters), and lots of wires and telephone poles comprising his 160M and 80M artillery battery on a weekly basis.
Doc was a CW operator, a true DXer, and one of a rapidly vanishing breed of ham who lived the ethics and courtesy of what a amateur radio operator should be. When he showed me his station, he spent an entire afternoon with me, one he could have spent with his patients earning income. I came to fully appreciate what a Big Gun he really was. I knew then that DX was the highest pursuit, and no matter where my interest in amateur radio took me through the years, I would always aspire to be more like Doc. To this day, his station remains in my mind's eye as the ultimate Nuclear-Powered Big Gun DX station, the only way to work DX! Sadly, only ten short years later, less than a week after I passed my extra, Doc left us. I am sure he is still working DX, only on a much grander scale than our mere earthly world can provide.
I have never had the money, real estate, and free time together in the same place to bring about today's version of his station. I have had to make tradeoffs against equipment and antennas, housing, etc., all of which have prevented me from constructing that one-of-a-kind, top-shelf station that would blow the pileups away and place me on the Honor Roll within a year. It's been dipoles nearly my entire 20 years as a ham and until recently, used older technology equipment, with whatever wattage it could muster up at the moment to that dipole. My lame excuses for what I generously called antennas were almost always hung no higher than 5 feet above my roof, or worse yet, in the attic, 5 feet under my roof. Ask me someday and I'll tell you about the ball of plasma that formed on the roof flashing (an appropriate term) when I dumped a KW into an unbeknownst to me rotted coax trapped in a rain gutter under composting leaves. It was probably the low point of my ham radio experience.
At the end of the day, I am often too tired, too drained and too frustrated to spend much, if any, time adding to my country count. Weekends are often spent recovering from the week, and tension, even the good kind that comes from trying to crack a pileup is something I try to avoid like an old Swan 250 (a.k.a. Swan two-drifty) in a local hamfest flea market. I get all the tension and competitive challenge I want at work, and retirement, when I will, no doubt, come to miss a sense of the excitement I became accustomed to across the better part of my life, is too far off to even imagine right now. But the DX bug has me in it's grip, as it has ever since I learned as a child gazing upon Doc's antenna forest about this thing called ham radio. In my heart and in my mind, I dream on about being Big Gun. However, reality always seems to intrude and remind me that I am really just a little pistol; just a wannabe Big Gun.
I have all the makings of a Big Gun, but it's like being as they say, "all dressed up with no place to go." I do not have it integrated into an impressive array of hardware that burns holes in the sky. I've got a DXer's rig (IC-781...I know! It's not a Yaesu 1000M!), an amp (but it's not an Alpha!), but no monobanders at 90 feet. And I can't run my amp right now because I'm living in a rented duplex, and at 100-150 watts, I've already got a problem involving my neighbor on the other side of the wall and her telephone.
But across the years, it comes to me. I remember it from a book on DXing I once read, and I can still hear Doc's voice when he talked about DXing and how he snagged that rare one. I remember the conviction in his voice, the confidence that he would break the pileup and get a contact, just because he decided to do it. I hear him now, and feel once again the swells of tension and anxiety as the DX goes back to yet another different station. I see the twinkle in his eye and the broad grin that must have surely spread across his face as he suddenly realizes the pattern in which the DX is answering calls. I feel the joy of the victory as he closes in, makes the kill, and signs "TU DX" and claims another rare one for his total.
No doubt, like all good DXing stories, (and fishing stories) this one has become embellished a bit in the past 25 years. But that's not important. The story is about the attitude, the persistence, the skill, and most importantly the intelligence and intuition that makes the tough ones possible. It is the mind game, the brain, the "wetware" between the ears, not the hardware on the desk or on the tower that separates the Big Guns from the Little Pistols.
Sure, Doc would use the full Kilowatt to a 5 element monobander at 60 feet. But in large pileups on rare ones, so would all his competition. He had no real advantage over them and so it came back down to being a mind thing again. Having a Big Gun station is nice, but in a pileup, it does not always guarantee success. Under good conditions, a smaller, 150 watt station can be heard just as plainly as the kilowatt. While the kilowatt/beam makes it easier to rack up more countries quicker initially, Big Guns will also "hit the wall" before Honor Roll is achieved. From a certain point on, getting new countries becomes increasingly difficult. Little Pistols are used to that adversity and have developed skills to get past it by the time the Big Guns run up against it.
Everyone has radios that are more or less capable of doing the job, even little pistols. Doc started out as a little pistol with nothing but home-brew equipment, and earned his DXCC that way. Doc told me that he focused on his skills as an operator so that he did not develop bad operating habits that often come when an inexperienced operator gets a high-power, big beam station before he/she is ready. Doc advised me to do the same and my budget, going to college, and having a "high-maintenance" girlfriend made sure that I did!
The secret is to realize that DXing is a people thing, and not necessarily a hardware thing. You are, after all, talking to another person with his/her own preferences, abilities, challenges, attitude etc., just like you. Place yourself in the DX's shoes for a minute, and think how you would handle the pileup. Would you take the first call you hear, or the last? Could you pick one or two out of the middle and call them? Would you tune off your transmit frequency to cut down the number of competing stations?
We've all heard the DX stations that answers the one lone W6 station who intentionally calls the DX after the pileup is silent. And we've all probably stuck around long enough once or twice to hear what happens as others figure out that this is how the DX chooses who he will respond to. The pileup duration begins to continue longer and longer as stations fight to be the last call transmitted before the DX answers. Of course, the DX is hearing all of this and is looking for a way to defeat it and make sense of the cacophony assaulting his ears. Maybe the shift to taking the first call is sudden. Maybe the DX starts answering stations that sound slightly high or low to you. Maybe the DX gets overwhelmed and simply quits.
Most DXers will tell you that getting to Honor Roll status was more of a mental game and about strategies, and the excitement and challenge of these is what made it so enjoyable. Anyone can operate appliances, but deducing the DX's patterns, and working him, that's where success is made. This success happens regardless if you have a Big Gun Global Communications Facility, or a Little Pistol's shack.
With a good attitude and determination and persistence, Little Pistols can achieve tremendous success, including DXCC with endorsements. It's a greater challenge than when you have the big stuff. You do it by being just a little bit more clever and with a touch more confidence than everyone else. Now that's a double sense of satisfaction for me: working the DX, and knowing I ran with the big dogs in spite of my rigs because I figured out how. Its a wonderful feeling to know that I don't have to stay on the porch anymore!
I never got to tell Doc that I at last passed the extra that he encouraged me to get right after I passed my Novice. He had confidence in me then that I would, and I appreciated that. I never got to show him any of my DX cards, but he knew that I had DX fever. And when I make honor roll, I know that he will pause from his heavenly rig to watch the smile spread across my face as I open the envelope and say, "Thanks Doc. This one's for you."
