If you have a radio amateur living next door, sooner or later you may have asked yourself a few questions. Why does he have so many antennas? Why does one of them occasionally rotate? Why is the light in his radio room still on at three o’clock in the morning? And, above all, who on earth is he talking to?
Relax. He is probably not communicating with aliens, intercepting secret military transmissions, or trying to contact a ship lost somewhere in the Atlantic. He is most likely taking part in a DX Contest. “Most likely” being the important part, because DX Contesting can sometimes look rather strange to anyone watching from outside.
So, what exactly is a DX Contest?
Imagine a worldwide competition in which thousands of people try to contact as many other radio stations as possible, spread across the entire planet. They do this using radios, antennas, headphones, computers and, quite often, an impressive amount of coffee.
That, in very simple terms, is a DX Contest. In amateur radio language, DX usually means long-distance radio communication. So if your neighbour suddenly shouts “Japan!”, it does not necessarily mean he has just booked a holiday. He has probably just contacted a Japanese amateur radio station.
And no, the contact itself does not happen through the Internet, WhatsApp or a mobile phone. It happens directly by radio. A signal leaves the antenna, travels upward, interacts with the ionosphere and, under the right conditions, returns to Earth hundreds or even thousands of kilometres away.
In other words, your neighbour sends radio waves towards the sky and hopes the upper atmosphere is in a cooperative mood. Surprisingly, it often is.
That is how an amateur radio station in Europe can contact North America, South America, Africa, Asia, Oceania or a tiny island somewhere in the Pacific, without the Internet being part of the actual radio path.
