Medium Wave DXing

From as young as my mid-teens I would listen to Radio Luxembourg, a very
popular station in the UK and across Europe. I also used to listen to the
pirate stations as I enjoyed listening to the music they played. Radio Mi
Amigo from Holland was my favourite as their music had a continental edge
which made it slightly different from the rest.

One day I remember tuning across the band during the late evening. I was
tuned to 1010 kHz and heard American news. The signal was fading in and
out, which made got me curious. I needed to know where this broadcast
was coming from. Eventually I heard the station ID "New York wants to
know and we know it ... this is W.I.N.S. Ten Ten Wins, New York".
WOW!!! I had actually received a real, live radio station from  New York
City! I had heard recordings of the slick production of American radio
stations but I never expected to receive one on my simple radio equipment.

Further tuning revealed more stations from New York and even a station in Canada! I found this completely captivating. The bug had bitten!

My father let me use his Trio 9R59D communications recevier, which I still have to this day. He erected a wire antenna across the garden, which
would have been roughly 50 feet in length. It was winter and listening then became nightly. I was able to hear more and more stations. I realised
that reception conditions would change from night to night and I tried to hear more and more US states and Canadian provinces. I would also hear
other countries and quickly added exotic Caribbean islands and several countries in Central and South America. This was great fun for me back then.
Today, the hobby is more of a known quantity and I understand more about the limitations of the hobby, but even so, it has been possible for many
of us to push back the boundaries and make many 'impossible' achievements over the years, including one I will never forget.

The professors and more scientific members of our radio communities always said that trans-polar reception could never occur on medium wave in
the United Kingdom due to the effects of auroral absorption. In other words, we'll never hear the state of Alaska in the UK like they do in
Scandinavian countries, which are further north and therefore experience less of that polar absorption. I went with a team of listeners on a
remote DXpedition to the remote north-west of Scotland in 1985 with the sole purpose of disproving this theory. It is with great pleasure that I
am able to state that such reception was indeed achieved while we were there. I have the first UK reception and verification of KBRW in Barrow,
Alaska on 680 kHz. It was a very proud moment.

Full credit to the rest of the team too: Mark Hattam, then from Hereford, David Hyams, then from Manchester and Ian Kelly from Reading. I was lucky
enough to spot this reception but we all had it. We all received many other, 'previously thought impossible' reception while we were there. It broke
new ground and showed the world new possibilities.

However you look at it, this is a great hobby, sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating when signals fade away or conditions take a dive, but it's
been my life in so many ways.