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What got you the DX bug?

Bumping this thread up, I didn't even see it back in May.

AM started before FM, learning that AM signals from distant places come in just before sunset all the way to sunrise. In 2004 I was tuning around my father's Sony receiver (an STR-DE545) with an AM loop, and ended up hearing 'Sunny 1520' KZNY Portland, 1530 KFBK Sacramento, 1560 KNZR Bakersfield, and 1510 'The Big Talker' KGA Spokane. The next night I heard 780 KOH (KKOH) Reno and 1160 KSL Salt Lake City. I was hooked! It got even better just before the summer of 2007, when I received a TOH ID on 1500 - 'KSTP St. Paul-Minneapolis' on a new Grundig G5 receiver. 1400 miles from my Seattle home!

FM DX started with fringe line-of-sight, later turning into Es. I enjoyed hearing 98.5 the Ocean CIOC from Victoria, but it was always fuzzy. My family went on a Washington coast vacation in July 2007, and while I mainly listened to KSWW 'Sunny 102.1', the local satellite-fed adult contemporary station from Aberdeen, I scanned around the dials. I heard several Seattle FMs, 98.1 KCYS (now on 96.5) from Seaside with country mixing with KING, and then tuning in 96.7 and hearing a clear KCRF Lincoln City at over 150 miles!

SO...several days after I went to the coast, I wanted to try hearing Sunny 102.1 from my Seattle-area home. The playlist was eons better than Warm 106.9, which played the same stuff over and over. It faded in and out several times, but not enough to listen to 24/7. Then I started hearing a weekend country countdown show fading up clearly on 102.1, knowing this wasn't KSWW. I hear an ID of '102.1 KTRA' and looked it up on my computer. Farmington NM...1,053 miles from where I lived!! I later found out this was caused by sporadic-E skip. The date was July 29th, 2007.
Now 10 years later and almost 750 AMs and over 600 FMs, I'm hoping to keep reaching bigger and better goals for DXing!
 
When I was a kid in the mid-70s, I had a Panasonic Toot-a-Loop that I mostly used to listen to local Top 40 station 550 KTSA. One night while tuning from KTSA to 860 KONO, I noticed that unlike during the day, I could hear a lot of stations in between. I kept tuning up the dial and eventually heard an ID of WHO in Des Moines, IA. I was amazed, and once realized I could regularly pick up far-away stations at night, I was hooked and became an AM DXer. Soon afterward I got into SW and a bit of FM and TV DXing.

By age 19 I quit the hobby. My family had moved to a new house, my main DX radio, a Radio Shack DX-160, had died, and we got cable TV. Also, I'd gotten into playing guitar and writing music.

Decades later, my interest was rekindled when my girlfriend got me into the "Fringe" TV series and I watched an episode called "The Numbers Station." I then came across an article about ultralight DXing and remembered that I'd bought a Sony SRF-49 a few years back for yard-work listening. One night in February 2014 I took it out and started tuning around on AM. Hearing distant stations again brought me that same thrill I'd experienced with the Toot-a-Loop as a kid, and I went whole hog back into the hobby.

These days I'm also into LW DXing, which I'd never done before, as well as FM DXing (which I've been doing almost exclusively during this recent Es season).
 
crainbebo said:
Bumping this thread up, I didn't even see it back in May.

AM started before FM, learning that AM signals from distant places come in just before sunset all the way to sunrise. In 2004 I was tuning around my father's Sony receiver (an STR-DE545) with an AM loop, and ended up hearing 'Sunny 1520' KZNY Portland, 1530 KFBK Sacramento, 1560 KNZR Bakersfield, and 1510 'The Big Talker' KGA Spokane. The next night I heard 780 KOH (KKOH) Reno and 1160 KSL Salt Lake City. I was hooked! It got even better just before the summer of 2007, when I received a TOH ID on 1500 - 'KSTP St. Paul-Minneapolis' on a new Grundig G5 receiver. 1400 miles from my Seattle home!

FM DX started with fringe line-of-sight, later turning into Es. I enjoyed hearing 98.5 the Ocean CIOC from Victoria, but it was always fuzzy. My family went on a Washington coast vacation in July 2007, and while I mainly listened to KSWW 'Sunny 102.1', the local satellite-fed adult contemporary station from Aberdeen, I scanned around the dials. I heard several Seattle FMs, 98.1 KCYS (now on 96.5) from Seaside with country mixing with KING, and then tuning in 96.7 and hearing a clear KCRF Lincoln City at over 150 miles!

SO...several days after I went to the coast, I wanted to try hearing Sunny 102.1 from my Seattle-area home. The playlist was eons better than Warm 106.9, which played the same stuff over and over. It faded in and out several times, but not enough to listen to 24/7. Then I started hearing a weekend country countdown show fading up clearly on 102.1, knowing this wasn't KSWW. I hear an ID of '102.1 KTRA' and looked it up on my computer. Farmington NM...1,053 miles from where I lived!! I later found out this was caused by sporadic-E skip. The date was July 29th, 2007.
Now 10 years later and almost 750 AMs and over 600 FMs, I'm hoping to keep reaching bigger and better goals for DXing!
Click to expand...

It sounds to me like we share very similar reasons for dxing! If I recall, I first began looking for various stations while vacationing on the Washington coast. I was fascinated by what I could bring in on the AM dial at night. ALSO, I was fascinated by how far various coastal FM stations would travel. Although I've let go a bit of the dx hobby since I started working in the radio industry, it still fascinates me.
 
KYTE, KPPT and KCRF are reliable as dirt in Pacific Beach/Moclips. This is roughly 150 miles, if not more. Since both are on the Pacific coast, there is nothing in the way to interfere with the signal! I've never gotten down to Coos Bay, because it's much farther AND has a bit of land to cross. I even got KQOC/88.1 once, before KWAO went on from Capitol Peak -- KLOP Ocean Park was lower power from the Astoria area, and 380 watt KTCB/89.5 Tillamook (+ KNHC Seattle) when KYAO-LP Ocean Shores (now defunct) was off the air.
 
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