DBS-Domestic Broadsting Survey
DBS a very useful guide…
…Of old times now very slim of just 14 pages and unfortunately free of charge…
I know this guide since 90s and after 2000. That time the guide was available in around 45 pages under price of 10 Eu to cover the printing expenses. It was first published on June 1973 under the name TBS or Tropical Bands Survey, edited by Carol Ferrel and Anker Petersen head of DSWCI or Danish shortwave club international .It was an annual publication until 1998 when it was joined in the remain edition to cover he international bands under the name DBS
BY coincidence i know the name of Carol Ferrel from the book ferrel's confidential frequency list a huge book of those times related to utilities
I know the club DSWCI since early 90s the time I was looking for clubs in order to be a member to monitor the news from the international radio station scene as also to a be their contributor from Greece .I was a very active in shortwaves in nearly all my life and before getting with them I id the same for another radio club from UK (WWDXC to name it )
The price of being a member was quite high for me and I just preferred to only buy once per year their DBS guide. Finally on 2004 (?) after knowing its availability from an email I immediately made my order. I m not very sure for the time but it is one of the samples I still keep in my shelter.
The guide has been received in pdf format . I always preferred to use less ink and paper as possible.I contacted Mr Anker the next year prior to send the new guide asking him to only send the file in its original l form in Word for Windows. That time I was fan of using macros for word to automatically reformat the text and keep it as extreme as possible in the page. I can suppose the original guide was in A4 but I always preferred the guides to be as small as possible with the final product printed in A5 only.
This is a photo of the middle page of DBS#12 of 2010 the only I kept in my shack as reminder of the older times, printed in a mates xerox system in the office I was working in the Uni. The guide was that time 28 pages out of 48 since it started on 1998.
Unfortunately since 2004 and then many stations get off shortwave in favor of other media eg internet or FM n a slow rate. In the new edition of 2020 there are only 14 pages!
Anker does very good job keeping the guide as updated as possible .
The guide is divided in 4 parts:
Three Intro pages with a nice photo on the front page from Anker’s photo collection from his worldwide trips. Nearly all I know show a musical happening The second and third page show the guide’s legend with abbreviations, the IU country codes and on the older versions the Indonesian regions and times is as short analysis on how to use the guide . In the newer versions the frequency table starts from the 3rd page missing the Indonesian regions and times as most of the outlets stopped shortwaves
The part 2 is the Tropical Bands Survey with a lengthy table. shows the transmission regularity by a code letter (active inactive random), frequency, power, schedule with the ID and useful info and the last log noticed form the club’s logbook or from the logs throughout the email listings.
The part 3 is the same but starts from 5700kHZ and above to 26 MHz ie the international bands
Part 4 is a listing of the deleted stations with the year of the final reception before is stopped
This makes the guide to still be the most useful guides ‘in the market‘ for domestic services. As any other competitors – I knew the TBL-Tropikal Band Liste from Willi Paβmann in Germany that stopped 2006– already vanished long ago to favor other aspects for the hobby (??) this is now the only guide in the market.
Meanwhile adding to this, Anker made an excellent addition to the DBS with a mini spreadsheet called TBM , ie tropical bands monitor, that shows the monthly changes strictly for the tropical bands . it is edited 2 times per year and offered fee of charge
A guide with great value! Both guide are very useful even in the fall of shortwave broadcasting with all the necessary info for someone to identify a station in a format very useful in a newbie or even a very experienced radio listener of DXer as I . More useful than WRTH or any other guide of the time or still today..
I always kept this guide’ updates nearby my R75 throughout the years instead of using the WRTH.With WRTH you need to do a lot of work to identify the station! Instead using DBS the problem is immediately solved because all th info is in your hands!
And a testimonial: A very good friend of me, Michael Stevenson fro Australia, He calls himself as a retired DXer He remembers buying the DBS in print directly from the club from Mr Anker . His latest purchase was on 2016. It was in A4 magazine format. As he noticed in a personal chat:
'yes I did enjoy using the survey and was helpful with what stations I could hear, I ordered my copies direct from Anker Peterson in Denmark
It is better than WRTH because it is more up to date because real DXers gives information on the last time a certain station was logged'
For more info: http://www.dswci.org/dbs/dbs.html
For the tropical bands monitor you can see http://www.dswci.org/dbs/tbm.html
or even direct from the main page http://www.dswci.org
If you find this info interesting please let him a message! I could personally prefer to send him some money for keeping the web page and continue this survey live and now alone for more than 47years!