I suppose at 55 I'm in the middle of you guys, and
pretty close to the average age of Ultralight DXers (from what I have
gathered). Back in the 60's and 70's when most of us became attracted to
AM-DX, it was common for me to stay up all night on early Monday mornings, when
most of the stations signed off for maintenance (allowing catches like WFLA-970
and WING-1420, among others, from the west coast).
Thinking those all-night DX sessions were long
gone, I found myself at Grayland, WA on November 2nd, blessed with exceptional
TP conditions that I had never yet experienced. Having brought along the
four "E100 variants" for detailed comparison testing (as well as a stock
DT-400W), I found myself practically DXing all night long, just like the teenage
years. What a rush! Almost every 9 kHz split had an Asian signal--
who could hit the sack?
Eventually I ran out of time to check all the
higher frequencies, due to the task of comparing the four E100 variants
repeatedly. But there was no doubt that if only the fully-modified
Slider E100 was used, 70 or 80 TP's would have been quite possible, instead of
the actual 49 logged. That little radio is a true DXing Monster, as any
user will agree.
