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What it is like to be a DX Station.

That is not a question but a statement and sometimes it was awful. All of us crave that 15 minutes of the bright lights with some actively pursuing it while others (like me) simply fall into the hole.

In 1963 I was a newly minted Ensign in the US Navy and my very first duty station was Midway Island, a rare DX entity, with the call sign pre-fix of KM6. 


Sand Island part of the Midway Islands

My stateside call K3IXU (a General) was earned the hard way and had 4 years' experience to match before operating from KM6. Needless to say, a chance to operate from a DX location was somewhat offset by the fact that there were 3000 sailors on Midway and only 6 single women. I logged lots of QSO hours.

The common saying: There is a Right Way, a Wrong Way, the Navy Way and then there is Midway as I found out rang so true.

In 1906 Midway Islands (there are two but often called Midway Island) was inhabited by a crew of 6 who maintained and operated the Midway station of the Transpacific Cable Network. Yes, in 1906 there were cable stations all across the Pacific linking the Far East to the US mainland. The Japanese cut that cable during WWII and so the only means of communications to/from Midway outside of the military circuits was ham radio. In 1964 Midway was reconnected to a new Transpacific Telephone Cable.

KM6BI and KM6CE were the two very active ham stations with KM6BI on Sand Island and KM6CE on Eastern Island. The bulk of the Navy personnel were on Sand Island, and a small contingent was on Eastern Island... they had a classified mission and only a few people could actually step on Eastern Island. Because of my job assignment I had a chance to visit Eastern Island. It was really strange to see old fighter runways covered over with Rhombic and Sterba Curtain arrays. Open wire feedlines were #10 insulated wire spaced 15 inches apart and supported part way on telephone poles.

Thus, KM6BI was on the air 24/7 running phone patches as that was its primary mission. Occasionally, I would take a turn as a control operator and it was kind of sad to be on one end hearing a sailor talking to a girl friend who sent him a Dear John Letter, and the sailor just could not reconcile why she couldn't keep her panties on.  Joyous was to hear the new sailor dad speak his first words to a newborn daughter. That was the cool part.

After the phone patch list was done we would hang around to give DX contacts. We did have a group of regular stations stateside that would connect to various locales, but long-distance charges may cause us to look for stations closer to the actual call location. Our CQ would say looking for stations near Bridgeport CT that have phone patch facilities to handle a health and welfare check. 

Here is the awful part of being DX. More often than not we would get a response to our CQ and then we would say here is the phone number. The response back was we don't have phone patch capability we just want a QSL card from Midway. I was custodian of KM6BI, and my policy was no QSLs for those stations. We had a notation in our logs NQ for No QSL.

Thinking back to those stations these were not 8-day wonders (Tech to Extra in 8 days) but are simply the dark side of our hobby where personal gain, went against the very tenets of what hams should do.

Also disgusting were the California KW stations that would not check the frequency and simply start transmitting right over a phone patch. Our usual hang out frequency was 14.335 MHz and most of the DX was around 14.205 so why were those 5KW stations calling CQ DX so high up in the band. Interference pure and simple was the answer.

When we would open the station for regular contacts. I would recognize a particular station with their W8 call sign only to have a pushy W2 in New York jump in wanting a DX contact. Unabashed I simply old the W2 you go to the end of the line. I was 22 years old at that time.

Lots of fun memories of operating from a DX location but what is clear, courtesy was a problem in 1963/64 and worse today. 

Them that know can make things go.

73's
Pete N6QW (KM6DD while on Midway)

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