Tips & Tricks

On this page, I present a few tips and tricks, which help you in DXing. The tips are strictly sorted by date.

  1. If you can't determine the exact frequency of a shortwave emission, use the single sideband mode and see, where the whistling stops. From this frequency, subtract a constant amount, and you'll get the original frequency.
    On the Grundig Satellit 3400, you have to use the LSB-mode, center the BFO-knob and substract exactly 1kHz.
  2. Many foreign stations can easily identified by their internet adresses. On russian, the dot is called tatschka.
  3. Most stations identify themselves in the last minutes before the full or half hour and not past.
    Because of this, a clock, which chimes at :25 and :55 is very handy and can easily be realized by a crontab entry like
    55,25 * * * * /usr/bin/play /usr/local/share/sounds/gong.au 2>/dev/null
  4. Noises can have different Reasons. An electro motor or a computer near the antenna. But even the power supply of a switched off inkjet printer can cause disturbances between S7 and S8.