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Nov. 14th, 2015 02:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dolariSo, while coming home from my property, I noticed my radio was having problems getting 99.5 KISS-FM, only 49 miles away. It kept fading in and out and fighting with a station playing Tejano music. The radio was picking up KQTC out of San Angelo, 133 miles away. And KQTC was blowing KISS's signal away. As time went on, a THIRD station began interfering as well, which was KNFX out of Bryan - 208 miles away.
It's a phenomenon I got into as a kid called "DXing." In 1984, I had a lunchboxed sized portable TV in my room I'd won. It actually had a really cool sliding analog dial you could tune into channel 2 all the way up to 83. And all the little slice of the radio band in between (I could get pagers, airplane transmissions and even unencrypted cordless telephone on that TV).
One day, I was scanning through the channels looking for Saturday morning cartoons when I picked up a weak but watchable signal I'd never seen before. I loved it because it was showing some Saturday Morning Cartoons we didn't get in San Antonio (they were already starting to not play cartoons on Saturday here). I picked it up all day, and then next week was able to watch it again. After that, I never got it again.
My dad was a radio man in Vietnam, and he taught me that radio signals could "skip" over where they're supposed to be received. I'd been picking up KIII out of Corpus Christi, 143 miles away. It was that long distance communication that got me into CB radio, shortwave and a passing flirtation with Ham Radio.
But I never really did another DX. I did a lot of research trying, though, which, at least, allowed me to pick up weak (but local) signals (I used to get KBTC out of Tacoma in Renton due to that research, although it wasn't really all that far away). And now with Digital TV, TV-DXing is REALLY hard (I couldn't get KBTC no matter what after the digital switchover).
Still, it was nice to know that when the atmosphere is juuuuust right, it can still happen.
It's a phenomenon I got into as a kid called "DXing." In 1984, I had a lunchboxed sized portable TV in my room I'd won. It actually had a really cool sliding analog dial you could tune into channel 2 all the way up to 83. And all the little slice of the radio band in between (I could get pagers, airplane transmissions and even unencrypted cordless telephone on that TV).
One day, I was scanning through the channels looking for Saturday morning cartoons when I picked up a weak but watchable signal I'd never seen before. I loved it because it was showing some Saturday Morning Cartoons we didn't get in San Antonio (they were already starting to not play cartoons on Saturday here). I picked it up all day, and then next week was able to watch it again. After that, I never got it again.
My dad was a radio man in Vietnam, and he taught me that radio signals could "skip" over where they're supposed to be received. I'd been picking up KIII out of Corpus Christi, 143 miles away. It was that long distance communication that got me into CB radio, shortwave and a passing flirtation with Ham Radio.
But I never really did another DX. I did a lot of research trying, though, which, at least, allowed me to pick up weak (but local) signals (I used to get KBTC out of Tacoma in Renton due to that research, although it wasn't really all that far away). And now with Digital TV, TV-DXing is REALLY hard (I couldn't get KBTC no matter what after the digital switchover).
Still, it was nice to know that when the atmosphere is juuuuust right, it can still happen.
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Date: 2015-11-14 12:55 pm (UTC)For me, "classic" Saturday morning TV tended to be a sort of omnibus show of a couple hours, with various guests, sketches, and some cartoons tossed into the mix - sometimes funnies like Merrie Melodies, sometimes action stuff like Centurions. Although the pinnacle had to be epitomised by the superlatively anarchic Tiswas. =:D (Which also offered up something of a classic of its own, a unique rendition of Bright Eyes)