Episode XIII: 2023 DX Season Preview

The VHF DX Podcast

Let the games begin.

On the 11th of May, Bryce and Nick reconvened to welcome in the 2023 DX campaign. Sporadic-E reports have already been trickling in across the northern hemisphere, and should only pick up from here.

Inside this action packed episode, we covered:

• Recent Es conditions in the US and Europe
• We caught up on some overdue shoutouts for loyal listeners (DFOPs) of the pod, and also want people to check out Loyd Van Horn's Grand Slam DX Challenge!
• Will Nick survive his Craigslist antenna assembly?
• What can we expect the rest of May in terms of Sporadic-E, and what exactly constitutes an "average" Es season? We take a statistical look.
• We make our fearless Es season predictions! We will revisit these in August and feel free to hold us accountable with Freezing Cold Takes.
• We hadn't kicked around Sporadic-E genesis theories on the podcast yet, so we dove into a few! Please feel free to send more our way that we missed.
• In our new equipment review, we highlight the TEF6686 portable several DX'ers are glowingly reviewing.
• ChatGPT - for DX?
• And, we bring back our DX Dilemma segment, and once again tackle the spicy topic of logging criteria.

The TEF6686 portable we discussed can be purchased at https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804184580360.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.order_list_main.4.789c1802DCIanX&gatewayAdapt=glo2usa

Check it out, but be careful of that SMA connector!

Finally, here is Ivan Cholakov's (NO2CW) YouTube video of it Nick clumsily referred to on the podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLwA2poOzhU&feature=youtu.be

Edit: We misidentified the creator and developer of SDR Console, Simon Brown, G4ELI, on the episode. Sorry, Simon! Please support his wonderful product if you can: https://www.sdr-radio.com/paypal

Happy DXing everyone, and we'll be back in June to hopefully recap copious amounts of logs!

Email us anytime at vhfdxpodcast at gmail dot com. Send us your all time best DX clips - we'll feature them on the June episode.