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Are / Were There Famous People Who DXed ?

Steve Green NEPA

Steve Green NEPA

I enjoy the postings of Ryan Howard of Warminster PA. The 'How Far Is It' site lists his den as 67 miles from mine.

And the late radio/oldies guy Mike Piazza (no relation to the catcher from Norristown PA, he told us) was known to have twirled a dial or two.

These are famous names, of course.

But the closest I could find to a famous person being a DXer was Jean Shepherd of WOR and 'A Christmas Story' fame. He had a ham license.
And the lead singer for the Edsels, as another example, said he got a lot of his musical inspiration from listening to WLAC Nashville.
Bob Seger wrote his great Rolling Stones-ish rocker 'Rosalie' as a salute to Rosalie Trombley, the music director of CKLW at the time (spin it if you got it).

So those luminaries certainly did dig a little DXing dirt to help inspire and maybe even propell their careers. But were they actual hobbyists ?
I tend to think not.

So were there ever really famous people who were and still at the hobby? Did Alec Baldwin ever listen to a Star Spangled Banner at 5AM Monday ? Did Anne Bancroft ever kick over a loop in rage when an adjacent station splashed all over an ID ? Any of the Kardashians watch their Dad spin the dial of a Zenith T-O ? Did McCartney ever wait for the tubes to light up so he could hear Cousin Bruce on WABC ?

Heck. I'll even settle for a Durwood Kirby or George Gobel link to the hobby.
 
I think that the older of the two George Bushes used a Sony ICF-7600 series shortwave radio but I don't know if he had done any DXing.
 
Art Bell, former Coast to Coast AM host, IIRC, still has a ham license.

-crainbebo
 
Was not Arthur Godfrey's callsign K4LIB? Plus Jackie Gleason was mentioned as being an avid SWLer in the 1987 Passport To World Band Radio
 
John Paul Jones, Led Zeppelin bassist, once said in an interview that when he was young he would tune the AM radio to hear broadcast stations from Morocco, which is where he first heard Arabic style music.
 
What about the cast of Gilligan's Island?

Yeah, they were actors playing fictional characters but when you think about it, DXing was shown a lot in that show.

They were supposed to be 200 something miles from Hawaii but they were often shown listening to that now famous AM radio hearing stations from Hawaii.

That's daytime saltwater DXing and you probably actually could hear some Hawaiian stations 200 plus miles out.



I can easily picture the professor in his hut late at night listening for distant stations from the mainland US. ;D
 
Barry Goldwater, who was mentioned previously, was quite active as a ham radio operator IIRC. As was another political figure, King Hussein of Jordan....father of the current King.

And, as might be expected, a number of people who work on-air in radio have active ham licenses. One example that comes to mind here in the Chicago market is former WLS jock and program director, and longtime broadcaster Clark Weber. I've heard him a couple of times on the ham bands.

(Can we count Arnie Coro?...LOL)
 
You forget that Bob Seger spent the first several years of his career playing small venue gigs in Southeast Michigan, well within the daytime range of CKLW. He went to Ann Arbor Pioneer HS with Art Vuolo, a radio geek who used DXing as a secondary hobby to cataloging radio stations, particularly FM, for radio guides. But I never heard of Bob DXing. Original founder and manager of Grand Funk Railroad, the late DJ Terry Knight (given name Knapp) listened to WLS and auditioned there at age 15, but was interested mainly in becoming a DJ there. A lot of sportscasters and sports writers grew up listening to baseball games on distant radio stations, including author Mitch Albom. But most, other than perhaps the hams, did not listen primarily as DXers for DXings sake.

How far was Gilligan's Island shot from KBIG's towers for those wilderness scenes?

Jean Shepherd actually grew up about a half mile from WJOB's transmitter, and first worked in radio there. I'm surprised Ralphie didn't have a crystal radio in "A Christmas Story".
 
Dan Schneider - television producer - is an avid collector of radios, some of them pretty good DX models.
 
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