Press Release - Text message alerts boost 'ham' radio contacts

[dxstation]

[link] http://www.dxstation.com/press.doc

I can't seem to find a forum for posting relevant press releases, so hopefully this is the best place to best it.



PRESS RELEASE
(For immediate release)

Text message alerts boost 'ham' radio contacts


Friday 24th June 2011

Radio amateurs now have a helping hand in their quest for contacting rare or distant radio stations. 'DX Station' is an innovative SMS text message service that alerts radio amateurs when the sought-after radio station's signal is spotted on the radio dial.

In this internet age, the radio amateur hobby is still very popular, with millions of licensed 'hams' around the world. Many of them operate on the shortwave bands, where it is possible with relatively simple equipment to contact radio amateurs in distant countries.

The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) offers a range of awards and certificates for amateurs who succeed in contacting other hams in more than 100 countries. Those who achieve contacts with every country are eligible to join the coveted 'Honor Roll' - an achievement which can take decades of hard effort to obtain. Awards are also offered by the Radio Society of Great Britain (RSGB) for contact with ham stations on islands.

To assist in tracking down those elusive radio signals from far-flung corners of the globe, DX Station operates a network of automated radio receivers, which constantly monitor the radio amateur bands for sought-after stations, and then instantly sends a text message alert to those hams who have indicated their interest in contacting that particular 'DX' station.

The use of real-time text messages gives subscribers to DX Station a competitive advantage, since they can hopefully contact the distant radio station before their colleagues join the fray. Since thousands of hams may be seeking contact with a single amateur radio station, the resulting cacophony of calling stations can hopefully be avoided by being 'first to know' that the rare station is on the air.

DX Station cannot guarantee that the radio amateur will be able to contact the distant station - that is down to radio signal propagation and the efficiency of antennas and transceivers of both calling and receiving radio station. But it can certainly put the canny ham ahead of the crowd!

The DX Station text messaging service can be used on more than 800 mobile networks worldwide, and the low monthly subscription fee is easily paid by Paypal or credit card. These fees, which include a quota of text message credits, are used to maintain the network of automated radio receivers that the DX Station service relies upon for it's operation. A reduced fee trial is offered for the first month of subscription. Alert profiles are managed via a user-friendly interface on the service web-site at www.dxstation.com

Contact Details:
Web-site : www.dxstation.com
Email : qso@dxstation.com

[M0TTB]

Clearly a commercial advert... so I'll let the mods decide.

Be interested in how you collect ssb dx spots other than simply taking spots from the clusters?
With so many cluster spots being inputted by those who seem to be either listening wearing ear muffs or typing whilst wearing boxing gloves, paid sms alerts can be very expensive.

[M0TZO]

We already have.

We've been there with DXAnywhere.com (offline for now) and there was no money or interest to be made.

So I decided to let this one through for now.

Think at the height made about $12 in 1 month. Minus the fees & service costs we were usually down or broke even.