Where it all began

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

1968 was probably the year that it all began for me. I was living in an outer Melbourne suburb in Victoria Australia. As an 8 year old I had been playing outside on a balmy evening. On my way back to the house I spotted our neighbour on his porch with a shortwave radio tuning into D.Welle and the BBC. I was absolutely fascinated at what this guy was doing, picking up radio stations from the other side of the world. I spent half an hour with him and it was probably at this moment that the seeds were sown for years of enjoyment in the hobby of Dxing.

Eight years passed and I never really thought much more about the hobby. It was during my senior days at school the bug really bit. Friends of mine were into the CB radio craze. We all had 27Mhz transceivers. CB's at that time were illegal and as kids we thought that every Post Master General mail truck was the enemy and that radio inspectors in tracker vans were out to get us.

 

At school we started a Radio Club during our lunch breaks. But that was banned by the school master after a while when he discovered that we were transmitting illegally and we were stringing wires up flag poles and out of windows. At first it looked like we destined for amateur radio as a hobby. However my radio hobby was about to take a twist.

Northcote Technical School in Melbourne Australia 1976
That's me long red hair centre 2nd left

One afternoon while riding home from school I saw this huge radio tower in a backyard. I was fascinated with this tower and some weeks later my curiosity got the better of me. I parked my bike up against the fence and peered over. The huge Tri-bander beam was in action and I could hear dx coming from the backyard shack. All of a sudden this guy yells out.. "What do you think you are doing". Well I got such a fright that I fell off my bike and came a thud on the concrete lane way.

Not Thornbury but our former Walsoorden dx location in Holland

I peered up and there was this man looking at me with a quizzical look. It turned out to be Dennis Harkin VK3ADJ. Dennis took me inside and showed me his shack. I was in radio heaven. Here was this guy chatting to yanks on 20m. Dennis took me along to meetings of the Western Suburbs Radio Club in Melbourne. It was mainly amateur guys and a lot of them were in their 50's. I suppose they saw it as a good opportunity to get new blood into the hobby.

The problem was that I never really felt comfortable doing the ham thing. I enjoyed the technical side of things but not the talking on air. I actually found it a bit boring. Unknown to Dennis, he was the one who probably turned me away from being a ham. One afternoon he was having a clear out of his shack and presented me with a National HRO Receiver.



My first receiver and what a receiver for a first. The National HRO - She was a beauty

I lugged my prized possession home on my bike with all the coil boxes. I fired it up that evening with a bit of wire up the tree. Wow.. I was totally blown away. There was so much to hear and so many bands to tune into. I remember being in awe of it all. The very first station I ever heard in 1976 on the old rig was Radio Japan on 15160 kHz. They were asking for reception reports and I thought.. well what the heck. No frequency, program details or return post.. My letter simply said.. "Enjoyed your program - Please send QSL card" Much to my surprise a fortnight later a huge parcel arrived with all these goodies and a prized QSL card. I thought to myself.. this is so cool.

I started writing to every station I could hear in English. I was doing 20 hand written reports a night and often I never made it to school because I was so exhausted from the nights work. In next to no time I had 100 countries verified. The next few years I was more intent on just SWL and really didn't fully understand what DXing was all about. Even technically I was a bit naive and would string longwires up trees, I even tried mums clothes line and actually heard Uganda on it. I recall nights of sitting in my bedroom with thunderstorms approaching and watching the static discharge between the coax core and the braiding. That was quite a scary sight.

As years went by I learnt a bit more about antennas and strung a few rather large dipoles up. The yard in Thornbury was quite long and fitted a 90 and 60m half wave dipole in quite well. That Thornbury site yielded some great dx in the early days from home. It went against all logic because we lived 300m from a railway with overhead wires and we were just a 100m away from tram lines. It was a very good Asian site and in particular for Indonesians. I just wish I had of known about Ewe antenna's back then.