Loyd Van Horn (Teak Publishing/DX Central) has produced another great video for his YouTube channel at: https://www.youtube.com/c/DXCentral DX Central provides some of the best and most interesting content for DX’ers.
A few notes about why the NRC CPC decided to change our standards for QSL verifications from DX Tests:
- All the work is done by volunteers whose time is limited.
- Written DX Reports require considerably more time to verify than a short recording. There are lots of reasons for this; stations are provided with test material but often alter it to include their own programming, announcements, etc. Getting an accurate record of what the station recorded can be a challenge. DX’ers clock in the shack may be off by several minutes or more, making it hard to verify the sequence of reported parts of their reception, etc. Trust me, it’s labor-intensive. We still welcome them, and try to include them in the reports.
- We’re also specifying emailed reception files in .mp3, .wav, or .mp4 video format. These are the easiest for us to verify, and the videos make great material for Loyd to include on his YouTube channel.
- “Legacy formats” such as cassettes, Compact Disc (CD), or 1/4”
reel-to-reel simply requires too much time and legacy equipment. We can’t continue to support those.
- Reports submitted by mail (USPS) are no longer required. Again, it’s the time factor. Email is faster and easier for our volunteers to deal with.
Send all reception reports via email if it’s a CPC verification test.
- The explosion of remote SDR’s have led to a sub-hobby of people “DXing”
using their computer versus an actual radio. This allows people to hear DX tests that might otherwise be impossible due to propagation or time of day.
The problem is that some abused this by requesting QSLs for as many as 15 remote SDR’s in a single test. We now limit these requests to a single QSL request for only one remote SDR.
We also require that any such reception be clearly identified. We have had a few instances where people attempted to claim reception of a DX Test at a given location, without revealing that it was heard by the use of an internet-accessed SDR.
Personally, while I enjoy listening to remote SDRs for entertainment, I don’t consider it DX’ing. The only exception is people who build their own remote SDRs, antenna systems, etc in remote locations—this is common by some Arctic DX’ers for instance. Simply benefiting from someone else’s labor and expense to hear stations doesn’t seem like an individual accomplishment (but your mileage may vary) To each their own.
We hope you’ll continue to enjoy the DX Tests that the CPC is able to arrange. If you have a relationship with someone who works at an AM Radio station and think they might be willing to do a test in the future, please let us know. We need all the help we can get.
Thanks to Joe, Loyd, George, and Paul for all their hard work!
73,
Les Rayburn, N1LF
les@highnoonfilm.com
(Paul B. Walker Jr/HCDX)