We’re going to finish our look at DXing the graveyard frequencies this time with some highlights from DXers of their best graveyard catches. Please note my new e-mail address effective immediately: "dcbraun@comcast.net". The old address is no longer valid (so if you sent anything there since mid-August and didn’t get a response, that’s why!)

First we have one additional submission in the "How I began to DX" category:

Chris Dingo KA9MDB <razorradio@hotmail.com>: Hi, If you're still collecting AM DX stories, I used to regularly get KAAY in Little Rock AR from my NW Indiana location. Also KOA Denver, WBAP in Texas 820, Salt Lake City, Utah (1160?), and most impressive was a station in the Netherlands Antilles off the coast of South America on 800 nearly every night. These all came in on a transistor clock radio made in the late 1960's. Once I heard a MW broadcast on 600khz from Radio Moscow (around 1980). They claimed it was a different frequency when my friend wrote to them, but we both heard it on different radios in separate locations.

Patrick Martin <mwdxer@webtv.net>: Anyone have "a best graveyarder"? Mine is WNUE-1400-Ft. Walton Beach FL on a DX test in 1970 from Seaside, OR.

Rick Dau <rdau1965@yahoo.com>: Best graveyard loggings for me:

From rural Oakland, Iowa: KDRS-1490 Paragould, AR

From Iowa City, Iowa: WBOK-1230 New Orleans, KWTX- 1230 Waco, TX (QSLed); WMMZ-1400 Spartanburg, SC; and KGVL-1400 Greenville, TX

From Arnolds Park/Spirit Lake, Iowa: KXPO-1340 Grafton, ND

Best one so far from Omaha, NE: WGNS-1450 Murfreesboro, TN

Mike Brooker <aum108@postoffice.idirect.com>: WFOY-1240, St. Augustine, FL heard just after sunset skip, on Nov. 10.1979. verie letter (v/s E.J. Doyle N4BZM) says: "yes it is of interest to know of your reception way up in Canada during our regular programming. We have received letters from Canada, England and even one from Iowa. Our antenna sits in a salt marsh right on the coast line and I can understand reception along the coast line.. but that fellow in Iowa? Must have had his antenna atop one of those corn stalks".

John Sampson <jsampson@qwest.net>: A couple of loggings from Omaha in the 1954/55 time frame come to mind:

1230: KPRL Paso Robles, California, KLAN Renton, Washington, CFRG Gravelbourg, Saskatchewan

1240: KOLD Yuma, Arizona, KGY Olympia, Washington

From Freehold, NJ, in 1964:

1340: ZBM2 Hamilton, Bermuda, BBC Lisnagarvey, Northern Ireland

From Cupertino, California, in 1967:

1490: KTOH Lihue, Hawaii

All of the above were verified; have many other graveyarders but as the years progressed, the best become closer and closer.

Paul LaFreniere <plafren@boreal.org>: 1240 CJAR The Pas, MB

1490 WTUP Tupelo, MS

1490 WDLC Port Jervis, NY

from Grand Marais, MN

Emily <AmBandDxers@aol.com>: I never get anything good on Graveyards...I think the ONLY GY I have gotten is WFAS and that's not that impressive considering that I am in Northern, NJ anyway.

Patrick Martin: John, KTOH-1490 was one that Hank Wilkinson got from Santa Rosa in the late 40s. I saw the QSL from that one. By the time I had started DXing they were on 1350. John did you QSL KTOH-1490?

John Sampson: Patrick - Yes, I did; unfortunately, they wrote a verification note on my report and returned it. Would have much preferred a letterhead. Think I received them shortly before their move.

Patrick Martin: John; Even in those days, the stations did not always use letterhead. I think stations were better at letter writing/ typing then though. I have all the Hawaiians QSL'd including many call & freq. changes and I think KAHU-1060 may be the only one I got the QSL on my letter. I'll bet you are glad with the KTOH-1490 QSL.

John Sampson: Patrick - You're correct!; something is a lot better than nothing.

John Callarman <JohnCallarman@msn.com>: John Sampson isn't the only John on this reflector to have a KTOH-1490 QSL. I logged and verified KTOH in March of 1956, and the verie signer was a world famous ham DX'er... Katoshi Nose KH6IJ... who was C.E. at several Hawaiian stations as Alan Roycroft was later to become. In March of 1956, the closest AN'er domestically was another KTO... KTOP in Topeka, Kansas... but one morning, KTOH surged atop for a good log and QSL.

BTW, Hank Wilkinson was in North Hollywood, where I met him in 1958 (see photo I took of Hank in his DX den on the NRC website) and did not move to San Rafael until the '60s.

My best graveyarder on frequency check from Corvallis, also in the spring of 1956, was WOWL, Florence, Alabama, on 1240, atop the dominant Chicago station. My best graveyarder on regular schedule (and my first BCB QSL back before I'd heard of the NRC) was WHHM-1340, Nashville, Tenn., logged when the Nevada all-nighter had transmitter problems and was off the air.

Jim Bagge <K1ygg@aol.com>: Well Emily, I have been BCB DXing off and on since 1960 and I have never gotten anything impressive on the GY freq's. It sounds too much like a constant jumble for my hearing and limited patience. That plus the northeast is just loaded with stations on those freq's.

Barry McLarnon <bdm@bdmcomm.ca>: Tough to narrow it down to one - how about one for each GY frequency? Here's mine from Ottawa, ON:

1230: WSBB FL New Smyrna Beach

1240: WFOY FL St. Augustine

1340: WMRK AL Selma

1400: KGVL TX Greenville

1450: KATE MN Albert Lea

1490: WVGB SC Beaufort

Interesting to see that some of these were also mentioned by other DXers...maybe those stations have better than average antenna systems.

Chuck Hutton <chutton1@qwest.net>: My most memorable graveyarders would have to be:

(1) 1490 - HJ whatever (I don't remember the calls) "Punto Cinco", Bogota, Colombia. When conditions were good to South America, this guy would sometimes be on top (yes, on top) of the pile on my south-facing Beverages. I even once was able to tape them on top of the channel using just a 75' longwire, but that was a once-only thing. There's nothing like the thrill of having LA DX (from Colombia at that) come up on top of the domestics.

(2) 1450 - YV whatever, Radiolandia. It wasn't as strong as Punto Cinco but it was there every year or so during the sunspot peak.

(3) 1490 WKEM, Immokalee, Florida. Some of you guys might remember NRC'er Steve Kennedy who was the CE at this station and others. I could hear WKEM almost any time I wanted on the south Beverage (it was right in the boresight) but one night about 25 years ago Steve ran a DX test at WKEM. It was heard pretty well (even in the northeast if I recall), but no one outside of Immokalee itself can beat my tape of WKEM from that night. It was totally on top of the channel with nothing else audible for a period. I even excerpted a bit of the Sousa marches he played and put it on a miscellaneous tape of music that stayed in the car for many years. It was only 700 or 800 miles to WKEM, but the strength was just amazing. Easiest DX test ever.

All of these were caught from Atlanta. Punto Cinco and Radiolandia were the only SA graveyarders for me. They both really got out, as they were heard in Scandinavia.

Doug Smith, W9WI <w9wi@w9wi.com>: My best I guess would be KYLS-1450 Fredericktown, MO at just shy of 200 miles. I don't spend much time on these channels either; hearing anything more than 50 miles away is pretty rare even with an expensive receiver and big antenna...

Ron Gitschier <RGITSCHIER@doyle.navy.mil>: 1230 WSBB New Smyrna Beach, FL from St. Croix, US Virgin Islands. I have yet to really dig into this realm. Uncharted territory for me to dig into once I retire from the Navy. Or at least get off of sea duty and surfing salt water path signals. Perhaps they have their tower in a salt marsh or in the brine. WFOY's self supporting tower is in the intracoastal waterway of St. Augustine, a stone's throw away from the Fountain of Youth, staying true to it's call sign.

Benjamin Dangerfield <ben-dangerfield@worldnet.att.net>: I don't do GYDX as a rule, but back in 1964 I had a fine logging of BBC-North Ireland while local WHAT was on the air. [Of course, N. Ireland is now on 1341, but I occasionally get the het.} My point, though, is that a local, such as WHAT can screen out most of the domestic stuff thus enabling some other strong signals to get through.

Randy Stewart <jrs555t@smsu.edu>: Yeah, but if they're running open carrier, it's especially helpful, hi! (Was WHAT in talk programming of some sort? Music on a local is always hard to hear through, I think...)

Bruce Conti <BACONTI@aol.com>: The keys to successful graveyard DXing; keep a tape recorder rolling to catch all the action, and have a good book to read!

Rick Kenneally <woodlandview@yahoo.com>: Yep, a tape recorder is by far the best way to GYDX. I've logged over 60 GY stations this year. GY frequencies are a great source of new stations, particularly when conditions are changing like at sunset/sunrise.

Robert Foxworth <rfoxwor1@tampabay.rr.com>: My best guess is 1974 - 1975. I was living in Long Island. I never could get beyond the single hop skip range, but managed to get many of the stations at short range. My favorite target was the New England area and eastern Canada, and I managed to QSL a bunch of them. I used a 40-foot outdoor wire which really seemed to like that area.

I did better in the summer months, as the skip was a lot more selective geographically and with luck, the desired station would fade up and be heard well. However back then a lot of those stations signed off at midnight, or at 0005 etc.

Bruce Conti mentioned interning at WKRI-1450 which I heard and QSL'ed back then. They had a midnight s/off.

One of my favorite times of the summer was the twice-per-season times the Boston Red Sox did a night-game stand on the west coast, and it would be often 0130 by the time the games ended. I managed several stations that way including WLKN-1450 Lincoln, ME, on late with the Sox, my favorite team then. My verie was signed by the owner who noted that he was a past CBS employee, an item I always included in reports.

I never submitted anything to GY records. The one record I could have claimed, if I heard them one year layer, was KYOR 1450 Blythe CA. on a f/c in 1959, probably some 2600 miles. The current record I see, is about 200 miles. They used a CW ID and it turned out that 1 or 2 others in the east heard the CW also, but because of not having taken the time to learn CW, did not know what they had until the next bulletins appeared, probably 3 weeks later. This was during a scheduled DX test from another station, a no-show, under WJXN Jackson MS, the only thing on 1450 at the time with RS.

I would really like to see the GYDX records include the year of the reception, as a lot can change in 41 years. But I know full well that is an impossible task. But in the absence of such a time scale, the records lose a lot of meaning.

Hard to believe that old reprint is still around.

John Callarman: Reception of North American stations on graveyard channels by DX'ers in New Zealand used to be common. I did a DX show in March, 1956, from KCOV, Corvallis, Oregon, on 1240 kHz, back when the maximum power on graveyard channels was 250 watts, and got two thorough, detailed and accurate reports from New Zealand. The farthest east, though, that our signal reached was to Oklahoma City. The Chicago all-nighter dominated 1240 on the East Coast. On my own DX'ing in the spring of 1956 from Corvallis, I was able to confirm the station in Decatur, Alabama, WHOS, I think it was at the time, and had tones during the scheduled time for WFOY, St. Augustine, Fla.'s frequency check, but could dig out no announcements. Needless to say, with nearly every station running 24 hours, even the New Zealand DX'ers likely get nothing but a jumble on our graveyard frequencies now.

Patrick Martin: John; Some really great catches there! The 50s must have been fantastic. Unfortunately I did not get into DXing until the 60s. I forgot Hank lived in North Hollywood. I remember him telling me that. He moved to Santa Rosa in the 60s. For a time in the early 80s he moved to Salem, but it was too rainy and he went back to Santa Rosa. I spoke with him on the phone maybe 10 years ago. He was DXing SW a bit them.

Russ Edmunds <wb2bjh@nrcdxas.org>: My best were all heard from Northern NJ during the period 1969 to 1982:

1240 - WFOY - St. Augustine, FL

1400 - WFPA - Fort Payne, AL

1450 - WMFJ - Daytona Beach, FL

1450 - KFIZ - Fond du Lac, WI

1490 - KXRA - Alexandria, MN

1490 - WKEM - Immokalee, FL, from the previously-noted test.

Nothing I've heard from here since I re-activated in 1990 even comes close to any of those.

Charles C. Boehnke <kale@juno.com>: Anything I hear on a GY frequency is DX to me as it will be well over 2,000 miles. We have no GYs in Hawaii! We did at one time many years ago when we had KTOH 1490. It was heard a few times on the mainland, but that was centuries ago! (Seems like it)

Pete Taylor <ptdx@att.net>: "Best" can mean whatever we want it to mean; in my mind, it does not solely relate to distance. Some of these were just really neat unexpected surprises. By location:

GRAVEYARDERS:

1230 BEV58 Taichung, Taiwan (from Hangzhou, China; 423mi)

1230 KWG Stockton (from Tacoma, 649mi)

1230 LT2 Rosario, Argentina (from Poipu, Kauai, 7514 mi)

1240 ZYI774 Recife, Brazil (from Cape Town, 3819mi) - this station used "September Song" as a theme and was heard all morning long.

1240 LN PBS, Shenyang, China (from San Francisco, 5541mi)

1240 *KOLD Yuma (from Miami; 2116mi)

1340 DZMM Manila (from a C.G. ship at 3104mi)

1340 KMYR Denver (Durham, 1442mi)

1340 KPRK Livingston, MT (Durham, 1771mi)

1340 WCMI Ashland, KY(Miami; 889mi)

1340 *KOLE Port Arthur, TX (Miami, 965mi)

1340 KRUX Glendale (C.G. ship, 3059mi)

1400 AFKN Inchon (C.G. ship, 2259mi)

1400 KRE Berkeley (C.G. ship, 2508mi)

1400 KCHS Truth or Conseq., NM (Miami, 1696mi)

1400 KARR Great Falls (SF, 876mi)

1400 JOQL Kushiro, Japan (SF, 4651mi)

1400 KSEW Seward, AK (SF, 1455mi)

1400 *WBIZ Eau Claire, WI (SF, 1669mi)

1400 KSMA Santa Maria (860mi)

1450 KBRL McCook, NE (Chattanooga, 909mi)

1450 WKEI Kewanee, IL (Durham, 697mi, 100w)

1450 KXXL Bozeman (SF, 800mi)

1450 KAYE Puyallup (SF, 649mi)

1450 KVML Sonora (Tacoma, 651mi)

1490 XEMS Matamoros (Cabo San Lucas, 809mi)

1490 KTTR Rolla, MO (Durham, 723mi)

1490 2AY Albury, NSW (Honolulu, 5355mi)

1490 WELO Tupelo, MS (Miami, 775mi)

1490 KOWL So. Lake Tahoe (Tacoma, 591mi)

1490 KTOB Petaluma (Tacoma, 628mi)

(All QSLed except *)

Except for those heard in Tacoma, most of these are pretty old loggings. From Tacoma, I have only heard GYs in WA, OR, BC, CA, ID, MT and AB.

See you next time…