Signal Reporting

[majoco]

When I was about 8 years old I got my first shortwave radio. It was a modified crystal set and covered from what I now know was from just under the 49m band to just over the 19m band. In just a half-turn of the tuning knob picking out the individual stations was a very hit-and-miss affair but in the cold war era of the 1950's in Europe there were many stations on the air.

Three years later I got a proper radio for Christmas - a war surplus R1475 that covered 2 to 20MHz in four ranges with a spiral-cut tuning dial like a huge bandspread. I discovered that stations were requesting reports of their signals and so I started to send them off. I didn't get many replies and a Ham friend of my Father put me right. He showed me what the distant station wanted to know, not just a "I heard you" but a clear and concise report. Soon the QSL cards were flowing in - after about five years I had two shoe boxes full - I ran out of bedroom wall space quite quickly and had to just post a "top ten" instead. Unfortunately the two boxes of cards went missing when my Father moved house when I was away at sea.

The pic below shows me and my Dad with the R1475 taking notes with a fountain pen!


This brings me to the point - the standard of signal reporting as shown by some posts to this forum is pretty bad. I don't want to rain on anyone's parade and impose my thoughts so I did a bit of Googling and found this excellent article on the "DXing.com" web page. (DXing.com/reportin.htm) I hope with their permission I can quote a few sentences below.....

"QSL" is the radiotelegraph code meaning "I confirm." In shortwave listening, a "QSL" is a card or letter from a radio station confirming that the recipient indeed heard the station.

In the early days of radio, stations were eager to know how well they were being heard. To encourage listeners to write in and report their reception, stations offered to send listeners souvenir cards and letters Soon SWLs began to collect these QSLs from stations as avidly as many people collect sports cards today.

Most international broadcast stations today use regular monitors to assess how well they are being heard and no longer rely upon listener letters. However, most broadcasters still respond to listener reception reports with QSL cards or letters. Many SWLs have amassed impressive, colorful collections of these souvenirs of their listening experiences.
To receive a QSL from a station, you need to send a "reception report" to the station giving information about what you heard, the reception conditions, and what you liked (or didn’t like) about their programming. A good reception report should include the following:

the date and time (in UTC) you heard the station

the frequency on which you heard the station

details about what you heard sufficient to establish that you indeed heard the station; these are things like names of announcers and programs, titles of musical selections, station slogans, etc. (be sure to include the times you hear the various items)

an evaluation of the signal quality, including strength, degree of fading, and any interference you were experiencing (include the names and frequencies of interfering stations)

the make and model of radio you are using, along with any external antenna you use

comments and suggestions about the station’s programming

That last element is very important, since most international broadcasters today rely upon reception reports more for listener input about programming than they do for information on how well they are being heard. Don’t be afraid to candidly state what you really liked or disliked about their programming, and feel free to make suggestions about what you would really like to hear. Some major changes have been made as a result of these suggestions. For example, at the height of the Cold War in the late 1960s, the USSR’s Radio Moscow referred to American men who had no formal government title, such as "Governor Smith," simply by their last names, as in "Smith" and "Jones." A letter from an American listener pointed out that this sounded rude and uncultured, and that letter was read on Radio Moscow’s "Moscow Mailbag" program. The hosts said they were unaware of how this was perceived and no offense had been intended, and from that day forward Radio Moscow used the title "Mister" when referring to American men in its newscasts and commentaries!

Some stations like to receive signal information in the "SINPO" code. SINPO stands for signal strength, interference, atmospheric noise, propagation, and overall reception quality. Each factor is rated on a 1 (worst) to 5 (best) scale, with a report like SINPO 55555 indicating the reception quality you get from a local AM or FM broadcaster. However, I prefer to describe reception quality in words, since I can give more useful information to the station that way.

To encourage frequent reception reports, many international broadcasters change designs of their QSL cards frequently and offer special series of cards that require you to send reports at regular intervals. In the late 1980s, for example, Radio Denmark offered a set of QSL cards that formed a painting when all cards were collected. Other stations send out stickers, decals, and pennants made of paper, plastic, or cloth to regular reporters. And a reception report to a station will typically get you on their mailing list for program schedules for years to come.

What I find strangely missing from the above report is that there is no mention of the receiving station's location or reception local time - it may not be the address from which you sent the report, for example if you were on holiday on a beach facing west the reception there may be totally different from your home in the middle of an arid desert! Local time as well as UTC/GMT is very helpful in determining what the propagation conditions could be - gray line, night time at the receiver vs day time at the transmitter etc.

Stations these days have no problems putting out MegaWatts of power into directional antennas especially on longwave but 60 years ago 100kWatts was a big station and the tiddlers really wanted to know if their signal was getting out. Jamming and squatters were much more common in those 'propaganda' days!

So let's smarten our act up, guys, your reports should be something to be proud of and hopefully be of use to someone else wanting to listen to that station!

Cheers - Martin

 

[n5ims]

I agree that including text with specific details on your listening post as well as how the signal was received could be of use to the broadcaster that receives it. SINPO is still important since there may be a language barrier that prevents the text from being properly understood.

One other thing that may cloud the impression of where the signal is (or was) sent from is the broadcasters use of relay stations. Quite often, there were large relay stations rebroadcasting signals so that great catch from Vietnam may have actually came from Cuba (for example).

It used to be fun to send reports to AM stations around the country. Most were happy to QSL for a confirmed report (and some would even provide corrections if you caught a co-channel signal but misidentified the station). Now days, with the satellite operations for huge corporate station groups, there may not be anyone local to receive your report and if so, they may simply toss it instead of sending you a QSL. Finding where that station is actually operated from (remotely from some corporate hubs, quite often) is nearly impossible and if you do, the report will probably be treated like unsolicited junk mail.

 

[theoldcop]

Well said Martin.
I use DXtreme as my logging software. It is formatted to include my narrative and reception description as well as SINPO. As a matter of fact, it can be set up to NOT allow you to continue inputting (is that a word?)unless the SINPO field has been completed. The software logs the particular equipment I'm using at the time, i.e. radio, antenna, speakers, headphones and any other station accessories I feel were relevant to the reception.
I also record 1-2 minutes of reception and I advise them in my reception report to expect the audio recoding containing their ID with a very specific name, in an immediate follow-up email.
This has worked well for e. But your mileage may vary.
John

 

[majoco]

Thanks, John. I do list the occasional "good catch" on the list here, but most often my data is just for my own interest. I always use the same receiver and antenna over the last year or so (G33DDC and an OCFD) so I don't log that, but I do list it if I use another receiver. It's always interesting to see if I got him last year at the same time!
Qsl'ing has virtually died, but the habit of recording the data is still there!

 

[Boombox]

On MW I always note relative signal strength in my logbook, S1-S5. ON SW, SIO is adequate for my uses. If there's or noise, or flutter fading, polar fading, etc., I usually write that down anyway, along with readability.

I don't post many logs here, because on SW there hasn't been much to post lately. On MW, it's only post worthy if it's exceptional.

I have never tried to get a QSL card from a station, ever. Never felt the need to get one.

I have only recorded a few minutes of Voice of Greece (before it went off the air) on my Grundig G2. Now that it's off the air, I'm glad I did. They always played some of the most haunting sounding female ballads.