The plea for contributions worked as outside contributions hit an all-time high in terms of quantity (although not in number of contributors). This was the only BLANDX I did where I wrote under half of the material. While all the other BLANDXes I produced were 36 pages, this one was 40 pages.
The cover illustration, via Ken Zichi, makes this my favorite cover, although I could have done a much better job pasting on the labels. I believe Ken was also the author of this issue's DXers' Kindergarten column, one of my favorites. In Distressed Places
, I wrote a parody of my own NASWA Latin Destinations column. I had been posting excerpts from old BLANDXes on the rec.radio.shortwave usenet group on the Internet. This brought in the first contribution from outside the US/Canada, with the Old Timer's article by Risto Vahakainu of Finland. (This had originally appeared in a Finnish DX bulletin, I assume in Finnish.) Rich D'Angelo, author of many DX Target features in NASWA came up with one that fit better in BLANDX.
The plan was to continue BLANDX on a every-two-years basis. Contributions came in and were filed and I wrote up some stuff. But, in late 1995 I got some web space at the university I worked with and was soon working on the first version of my Patepluma Radio website. This included some features from the old BLANDXes. But, I think BLANDX just needed to take a rest for a few years. I began thinking of bringing BLANDX back as a website around 2004. But the real impetus came while attending a DX get-together in August, 2006. Several people encouraged me to bring it back and suggested that I could do a lot around the subject of aging DXers. That led to the launching of this website http://www.blandx.com in March, 1997.
