I know. There are many how-to guides on doing reception reports, or even books. But, nobody has really, as far as I know, written a somewhat comprehensive guide on e-mail reception reporting.
E-mail reception reporting is quite new to the DX community. Or is it? Anyway, it exists for like 15 years or so, so I may not call that "very new" but it is quite new. There are many benefits of doing reception reports via e-mail, you don't have to pay for postage, no rushing to post offices and so on. From my personal experience, big broadcasters like Radio Romania International, or NHK World Radio Japan will reply with a paper QSL, some with reply with e-QSL, some with confirmation letters, some will just say "Yes" or "cfrmd" or anything like that- but you will also have to face the fact that many stations are not going to respond to first or second reception report. I sent over a dozen reception reports to Deutsche Welle before they finally acknowledged my Ascension report. Anyway, here is a guide of doing reception reports via e-mail. Some are even not going to reply at all.
1. Find a correct e-mail address to contact the station.
This can be very tricky and difficult at times, maybe harder than finding postal address. Anyway, some stations' e-mails aren't that easy to find. If you ever try to contact a station, you have to have their e-mail first. For major broadcasters, e-mails are not that hard to find. I usually go at their websites to check their e-mail addresses for appropriate departments. But usually, that didn't work so well. Some departments didn't reply. I switched to another way. There are many DX and SWL blogs on the internet, which, with their reception reports, also provide contact details for the station. Almost every blog under "blogs that I follow" section on my websites have the contact details for every station they QSL'd. I would suggest either checking the broadcaster' websites or checking some good DX blogs. Check out
South East Asia DX-ing,
Maresme DX,
DX Adam, or some other good DX blogs. Each of those blogs have links to other blogs which usually follow the same procedure. Some of stations, like Voice of Indonesia and Radio Veritas Asia have contact forms which you can fill, without going to your e-mail address and typing out station's email addresses. If you do want to reach out with reception reports, here are e-mails of some major broadcasters :
China Radio International - yinglian@cri.com.cn
Radio Romania International - rri@rri.ro
Voice of America -letters@voa.gov
Voice of Vietnam - vovworld@vov.org.vn
Voice of Turkey - englishdesk@trt.net.tr
2. Begin with reception report.
Many people usually find this really hard to start with or to begin with. After you found the correct address, start with addressing the one to whom it may concern. If you're, let's say writing to Radio Romania International, you can start with "Dear sir/madam", or "Dear Radio Romania International", it doesn't really matter how you address them as long as it is appropriate and not insulting. After you have addressed them, you can start anyhow. I started off first with "I'm reporting your reception", because I was too scared to say anything else. When I started doing reception reports more often, I started with "I'm happy to say that I have listened to your programme", because it sounds more relaxed and optimistic. Anyway, in the intro of reception report, you must (or at least I see people doing so) include
frequency, receiver you tuned with, QTH (place where you got the station from), time in UTC and QSL request (of course, if you want one). Date is optional, but you will include all of this in "technical details" section, which you will write later, if you will.
Anyway, it should look like this :
"Dear _______________,
I'm really happy to say that I have received your station and heard your programme. Your station was at _____________(frequency), and you were heard from ______ to _______ (time in UTC). Receiver you were heard from was ______________ (receiver), which was located in _________ (location). If my reception report of your programme was correct, I hope that you will send me a QSL card, but e-QSL will do too.
This really depends on your personal QSL taste. I usually like paper QSL cards the most, or confirmation letters, but I also understand stations that will have to pay all the costs for postage and stamping QSL cards. That's why I also ask for e-QSL cards or even confirmation letters. Anything, so I could know whether my reception report was right or not. If you, however, do want a paper QSL, leave your postal address below. I know, this might get a little risky, because you are afraid you gave out your postal address, but trust me and DX community - there are people who DX for 30 or 40 years, and nothing bad has ever happened to them. With giving out your postal address or basically any kind of contact information, you can start with your technical details and everything that is about reception report.
3. Write down technical details of reception reports
Some people may consider writing some factors of transmission redundant, but I always type some details twice, they are very important concerning the transmission. First thing that I always type is date. You have to type the date of transmission (for date and times in UTC check
this site), and after that, I usually type the name of the station I listened to. Of course, this really depends on the station you are writing reception report to. After that, I usually type RX site (which is the site I listened the station to). This is really important for the station, so I always make sure I type that. After RX site, I type the TX site (which is the site the station has transmitted from), of course, you can't know where the station transmitted from, unless that station, like Voice of Turkey, has 1 transmitter. There are many useful sites like
Shortwave Schedule,
Short-Wave.info or so on. Short-wave.info is better in my opinion, it also has the interactive map, and you can find the correct transmission you have listened to. After that, I added SINPO, but you do not need that. You will add that later, in signal comments. Frequency is one of the most important things in the reception report. Without correct frequency, I hardly doubt any station will accept your reception report. You have to write down the frequency during your listening, so you would not have troubles in searching the correct programme. Next very important thing about writing a reception report (I might have focused too much on usual reception report, but for everyone that has already read reception report, this is just a revision of the subject), is UTC time. Some stations (like Voice of Indonesia) also accept your time, but if you do that, they also request you to type your time zone (+0100 or +0200 or whatever time zone you are). For UTC time check, see
this site, and for time zone, check
this site. Also, an important issue about reception reporting is receiver you have used to report this reception. In case you have used SDR receiver, make sure to write down the location of the SDR. It is really important because of location. And most of SDR sites also have specifications included. For reception reports, you wouldn't need every single thing about SDR - you will only need the antenna. You can also add the language service has been broadcasting on - but that is optional. I usually add the language station has been broadcasting on - just in case if I have added something wrong, this will somehow help in correcting the wrong details. Of course, you can't use this when you're reporting something like VOA Radiogram.
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This is how the reception report looks (SINPO is optional)
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4. Signal comments
One thing you should really get extensive about is station's signal comments. During your listening, you should also check the station signal comments. Signal comments are usually rated with SINPO code. I thought I should explain what is SINPO code, but I have found this great photo online, which shows you how can you define station's SINPO code and what is SINPO code. Some people use only the signal, interference and overall code (SIO) or SINFO code (with propagation replaced for fading, which is basically the same word). You can also get really, really subjective with signal report - the more you get subjective, the more help this will get to the station.
5. Programme comments
Possibly the best proof you have listened to the station is writing down everything you heard during the transmission. Try to identify almost everything - name of the programme that was going on, name of the hosts, some bits they have mentioned in the show, maybe song names. I usually use Shazam to identify songs - but you can just describe songs, and it will be alright. Programme comments usually follow the same doctrine as signal comments - the more subjective you get, the better. Also, mark the time when the event happened, of course, you can do it in your local time, but you will have to note that somewhere. I would recommend UTC times again, it is much easier to you and the station too. If you can't identify something, or name of the hosts as example, just use "male host" or "female host", it will still help at some point. Photo below shows you how it should look like.
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| RRI programme details |
And that's it, folks. You have written an e-reception report. One thing you should add if you are an avid listener of the particular station you are writing to, is certainly feedback. If you are reporting to national public broadcaster, you should leave them a feedback of how good are they in representating their nation on shortwave or anything they are good at, or anything they should improve in their broadcasts.
If you follow those steps - you will get a successful reception report via e-mail, and I do hope that this tutorial helped you to start, or if you are already doing reception reports - hopefully it brought something more into your knowledge.
