The first few days of January 2017 saw an impromptu reunion of
erstwhile Asian DX Review HQ Staff . These were the enthusiastic lot who would
get together every week and bring out the DX bulletin of IDXCI called the Asian
DX Review (ADXR) in the 1980s . Dr Swapon Chowdhury was passing through Kolkata
on a brief stopover and he was the catalyst for this meet. We met at a South
Kolkata Guest House in the evening of 4th January 2017. Present were Sudipto
Ghose (SG) ,Babul Gupta (BG) ,Tripti Ranjan Basu (TRB) and yours truly. Also
present was someone who came in much later into Dxing but is our young blood
today – Debanjan Chakraborty. In the early 1980 when digital frequency readout
radios were just appearing, Dr Chowdhury had a Panasonic portable and he was the
soul behind one of the first DXpeditions to Digha in those days. One of my
earliest experiences in Dxing with the digital frequency readout receiver was
at Dr Chowdhury's Hostel room at SSKM Hospital.
Then there was long void as Dr Chowdhury migrated to Australia and
ADXR stopped rolling out by the late eighties. However, in this DX reunion it
was refreshing to find that this DX veteran Dr Swapon Chowdhury was still very
much in touch with the bands. As Dr Chowdhury talked about his Cuba visit of
2015 he sounded most enthusiastic about having heard AFRTS Guantamo Bay. Soon
the conversation went into DX history – how AFRTS Diego Garcia stopped its SW
operations in 2015 to how thrilled we were to receive AFRTS Diego Garcia in MW
in one of the Chandipore Dxpeditions of the mid 1980s. Then on to the hardware
– how is Dr Chowdhury finding signals from his Sydney apartment with his AOR to
how is Debanjan fishing rare long wave signals in his electrically noisy
neighborhood with the help of the
Russian PARDT whip antenna. Babul Gupta who has been an extremely active Dxerin recent times stirred up our DX envy as he talked about his Latin American
QSLs of 2014-16 including the QSL of resurrected Ecos Del Torbes via WRMI Radio Miami International !!! Then the discussion went on to the colourful Bengal pirates in the MW
operating in the Sagar Island area south of Kolkata especially in this time of
the year when pilgrims flock to Ganga Sagar Mela. The pcbs of PARDT whip for
homebrew also changed hands in this meet and the source was our technical genie
Sudipto Ghosh . Tripti Ranjan Basu who was the moving spirit and soul behind
ADXR all throughout the eighties acknowledged that Dr Chowdhury had impressed
every one by his familiarity with the bands while he had been less active in
recent times.
Dr Chowdhury had come armed with three publications – the
venerable WRTH and the two volumes of Utility DX frequencies of Klingenfluss.
This was symbolic of the present state of Dxing as the hobbyists have to toy
with Utility Dxing to keep up their interest. We all lamented the planned
closure of Australian Regional’s on the shortwave. Now that most of us had also
acquired an amateur radio license even though retaining strong loyalty to
Broadcast Band DX , the talks definitely went over to amateur radio homebrew
gears and BITX and Babul Gupta active forays into Hamsphere 4 !!
What was the message of this DX reunion ? In 2017 even in the face
of closing down of shortwave radio stations . the die hard broadcast band Dxers
are alive and kicking and the spirit moves on.
Dr Supratik Sanatani (VU2IFB)
4th January, 2017
4th January, 2017
