About me...

My interest in radio communications started at a young age: I was often found detuning the coils on the family's transistor radios - not a popular move!

During the 60's, my interest in radio was fuelled as domestic radio in Britain underwent a revolution with the advent of offshore pirate radio: Radio Caroline began transmitting, soon to be joined with the slick sounds of Radio London on 266m in 1964. These stations were conveniently situated (for me) off the Essex coast. On August 14th 1967 Radio London closed with the introduction of the Marine Broadcasting Offences Bill, but a defiant Radio Caroline continued. I joined the 'fight for free radio'!

Then, during the 70's, I became a keen SWL sending reception reports and collecting  listener QSL cards from stations around the world and on a few occasions submitting my logs to Practical Wireless (PW). My main interest was MW dxing  using a Grundig Satellite 2000* receiver with a 4 foot square loop antenna. Spent many a late winter's night waiting for strong European stations to close allowing stateside stations to roll in. WINS in New York on 1010khz (50kW) was normally the first to come in followed by CFBC 930khz and CHUM 1050khz and a host of others.

In 1983 there followed a natural progression from SWL to amateur radio: obtaining my class B Radio Amateur's License -G6XPX then 2 years later  passing the Morse test giving me my current call. The suffix (DPC) was chosen to reflect the names of my 3 children: Donna Paul and Caroline!

Also during the 80's I passed my Radio, Electronics & Engineering - C&G 222. Worked on electronic equipment designed to aid thalidomide sufferers. Serviced and QC'd commercial telephone systems. In the early 2000's I worked for several years in my local emporium: Waters & Stanton.

My favourite bands are 40 & 20m SSB, 15m slow morse & 10m FM using just modest equipment!

Have been active on RTTY in the past using an old Colour Genie EG-2000 computer (32KB ram!!) Now my aim is to delve deeper into data comms putting my networked pc's to good use!

Since the beginning of August 2007 I have been busy designing a special free internet toolbar which is proving to be very popular! Packed with features for radio hams and SWLs - full details here

Thank you for visiting my site and hope you find it interesting. If you have any comments please email me:

John

    Radio equipment owned  over the years:

IC-7000
IC-E208
FT-847
FT-707
FC-707		 FV-707DM
FC-102
FT-203R
VX-7R
VX-5R		 VX-2E
DJ-G1
AR-2002
Pro-2035
MFJ-993B		 Azden 10m
Bearcat 220FB
BC-9000XLT
FDK Multi-700EX
Satellite 2000*