What was the first station Y'all caught DX'ing that got You really interested?

[David67]

I first got interested in DX'ing on AM when as a 12 year old in 1979. I was cruising around on AM on My shortwave radio and started listening to the Trucking Country Music Show they used to have on WWL 870 AM back in the 70's and 80s. I thought it was cool that I had caught a station on AM so far away from Home(Metro Atlanta). I was hooked from then on.

[DavidEduardo]

I first got interested in DX'ing on AM when as a 12 year old in 1979. I was cruising around on AM on My shortwave radio and started listening to the Trucking Country Music Show they used to have on WWL 870 AM back in the 70's and 80s. I thought it was cool that I had caught a station on AM so far away from Home(Metro Atlanta). I was hooked from then on.

In 1958, I heard a test of KTCS-1410 in Arkansas, a 500 watt daytimer, from my location in NE Ohio. They asked for letters, so I sent one. When they replied to verify my reception, I was hooked! I did not even know how good a catch that was, just that they had answered!

[radioman148]

In the late 50s I heard WLW in the Chicago area. Nothing special about that, but as an 8 year old I was fascinated to be able to receive what I thought
at the time was a distant station. From then on I was hooked.

[BobOnTheJob]

On FM, it was hearing WSMJ 99.5/Greenfield,Indiana (77 miles) on an old tube type console radio with a few feet of wire for an antenna after my older brother had educated my 10 year old mind with "FM is strictly Line Of Sight" logic. I learned two things...FM is not strictly Line Of Sight and my brother was FOS...he still is today. FM radios back then were awful...the better ones would pick up Dayton at 35 miles.

On AM, it was a couple years later in 1965...like most school kids, I at least occasionally listened to WABC in New York on 770 (this was in Cincinnati). I listened to them every night & thought nothing of the distance...until the great 1965 New York City power outage silenced WABC maybe an hour after sunset & KOB/Albuquerque,NM was there. I mailed them a reception report & got a QSL card. That got me, hook, line & sinker.

[radioman148]

On FM, it was hearing WSMJ 99.5/Greenfield,Indiana (77 miles) on an old tube type console radio with a few feet of wire for an antenna after my older brother had educated my 10 year old mind with "FM is strictly Line Of Sight" logic. I learned two things...FM is not strictly Line Of Sight and my brother was FOS...he still is today. FM radios back then were awful...the better ones would pick up Dayton at 35 miles.

On AM, it was a couple years later in 1965...like most school kids, I at least occasionally listened to WABC in New York on 770 (this was in Cincinnati). I listened to them every night & thought nothing of the distance...until the great 1965 New York City power outage silenced WABC maybe an hour after sunset & KOB/Albuquerque,NM was there. I mailed them a reception report & got a QSL card. That got me, hook, line & sinker.

I listened to WABC regularly in Illinois, but was never able to get KOB. Good catch.

[BRNout]

Thanks to my dad, I learned at a very early age that - from Virginia - we could get WABC all the way from New York at night.  This was back around 1969 or so - right during their heyday.  Amazing station and I loved it.

And, one night in the car (waiting for my mom at the mall) he amazed me further with WLS Chicago which seemed like thousands of miles away to me at that time.  These "tricks" had me interested enough to try doing the same on my little table AM radio....dxing at the age of 5. 

FM came later - we lived in western MA and my crappy radio was picking up JB105 from Providence (it was about 1978 or so).  I knew that was odd and at the time didn't realize that FM signals could 'bounce.'  And it was really cool because that was the station we often listened to during summer vacations at the beach.  That gave me the bug for FM too.   

[Lawppy]

I was 9 or 10 years old. I was sitting in the passenger seat of the parents' 1987 Chevy Nova while Dad was in the store getting some milk or bread IIRC. I was flipping around the dial and I found 97.3 WMEE for Fort Wayne, IN. A station that in the mind of a 9 year old could only be described as 'better than our pop station'.

Dad came back out to the car and asked what I was listening to and I told him 97.3. Growing up in Fort Wayne, he was amazed that one of his favorite stations from back home still existed. I thought Fort Wayne was some exotic catch from here, but it was really only 60 miles away, which isn't very impressive at all for a 50kw station.

By 12, I figured out that radio could go MUCH farther than 60 miles. I started hearing Detroit and Chicago at this time and that summer I confirmed my first Es. I didn't know what it was at the time, but hearing San Angelo, TX will amaze any 12 year old radio nut.

[gar fla]

I was 10 years old (1972) and I discovered WKBW Buffalo booming in loud at night in South Jersey. Once my older brother explained why that was happening, he then showed me other music stations on the dial that had good signals like CKLW and WLS.

[radioman148]

When I was about 10 and would go out with my parents I would find an excuse to leave the restaurant early so I could go in the car and listen to the radio. "I have a stomach ache, oh and can I have the keys so I can hear the radio while I'm sitting in the car?"

[mimo]

I was 10 years old and couldn't sleep, so I turned on my radio and started tuning around, it was actually the first time I had ever changed the station on the dial.  I was living in Calgary, and had discovered that the dial was full of stations.  I heard CBK from Watrous Saskatchewan, 630 CHED from Edmonton, and CFUN from Vancouver, along with many American stations.  It was CHED and CBK that showed me the real power of AM radio.  I noticed in the daytime the next day most of the stations I heard were gone, but both CHED and CBK stayed around in the day, with CHED being stronger daytime because of their pattern change.  CHED was my favourite station for years, and you can imagine how excited I was a few years later to move to Edmonton, and actually be able to see their transmitter from my house, and have to be driven right past it on the way to scho0l every day.  

I discovered FM skip back in 1990 when bored in class, and not finding any go0d music on the AM dial (AM still rocked in western Canada back then) I switched to FM and found a station pop in at 92.5 playing the do0rs...I knew that there was nothing local so I wondered who I was listening to.  It was Flagstaff, Arizona.  I was shocked, I tuned around and discovered the FM dial had exploded from 8 stations to one on every frequency, that day we had every FM station from the entire state of Arizona, and they stayed in for hours.  Back then there was a HUGE gap between 95.9 and 102.1.  Calgary's FM dial was very empty, and didn't account for much listening back then.  It sounds strange today to say that in 1990, if you were under 40, you didn't listen to FM radio if you lived in Canada.