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Has your hobby ever had a significant impact on friends or family?

cyberdad

cyberdad

Other than occasionally annoying your spouse or significant other. ;D

I was thinking about this the other day. The thought came to me that my DXing interest actually played a permanent....if unintended...role for two people in my family.

The first was my wife's brother....five years younger than her. When I was in college dating her, he picked up on my DXing hobby. I let him use my Halicrafters S-120. He went on to get his general ham license before he finished high school and is still active today, more than 40 years later. More significantly, his interest and knowledge of radio and electronics led to him building a successful distribution business for two-way communications systems and equipment, which he sells to police, fire, EMS, hospitals, etc. in a five-state region.

Then there's my daughter. When she was in her mid-teens, I gave her an old analog Radio Shack portable when I bought my first digital unit. I figured she'd use it to just listen to local top 40 radio. Instead, what happened was she discovered foreign language shortwave broadcasts. She never had even the slightest interest in DX, but with the radio she discovered that she had a gift for languages. Starting with her becoming fluent in French before she finished high school. Even more so than her French teacher (a longtime family friend). She had CJBC on the car radio presets....including her own car later on in college. Purely to immerse in French. She eventually became proficient in several languages, and has lived in London for ten years where went on to get her Masters from Cambridge University. Then went on to teach American business English to non-native speakers in a program run by Queen Mary University. (She and her British husband are currently on assignment in Abu Dhabi, UAE).

For both my brother-in law and my daughter, it all started with an old radio!

Any of you guys have similar stories?
 
That's a pretty fantastic set of stories, cyberdad! It's going to be hard for anyone else to top those.

Back in high school, my interest in broadcasting and radio in general led to me and a friend getting ham licenses. I had a pretty bad couple of experiences early on that turned me off of the hobby, but he went on to get a general class license on his own later.

Most family and friends just "tolerate" my interest in radio and DX. :(
 
No one in my household, except me, in the past had any background or interests in electronics at all. The DX hobby didn't interest anybody :(. My dad rather watch movies. I rather DX. (I had a Realistic DX-390 and then a Sony ICF 2010 at that time) I was never a movie fan like my family members. Call me weird but it was true. The DX was mostly on FM and listening to hams on HF. I used an Onkyo T-9090 II for FM DX work.

No one I personally knew are DXers of any kind. So, no impact on friends, coworkers or family.
 
It is usually friends overhearing my radio getting a station they can't. The discussion usually ranges from "what station is that?" to "what kind of radio do you have?". Which has spurred a number of jobs overhauling AM radios with larger ferrite bars / tighter IF ceramic filters / alignment jobs. FM is usually better ceramic filters and alignment jobs, although the ceramic filter usually soups up the radio immediately, making a piece of junk work better. I've also helped people with better FM antennas - one person needed to get the corrosion off of their car fender where the antenna mast was mounted. A few needed outdoor antenna advice. I had an adopted daughter who was very mad I wasn't going to hook up her stereo to a new outdoor antenna - when the mast was right beside her window. I relented and put a splitter for her to listen to her 100 mile distant station.

My most unusual experience was being besieged by half a dozen kids at a pool in Lubbock, TX when I took a GE Superadio so I could listen to Radio Disney from Dallas. They, too, knew about the station and had been suffering through weak reception with a mixture of cast off all American 5 radios, old Hallicrafters multiband radios, better than average portables with long wires, etc. Quite a little DX club complete with a sheet telling when which Radio Disney outlet was better received. Astonished - I introduced them to the GE, and they probably bought out every one they could find in Lubbock. I also showed them about loop antennas, which prompted a scavenger hunt for old tuning capacitors. I sent them three myself. Such is the case with fanatics of one particular station / network / musical style.

That same adopted daughter also asked me to put narrow ceramic filters in her car radio before she went on a road trip. My wife welcomes Pioneer Supertuner upgrades in her car. I gave listeners to WAPN an over the air lesson on how to get FM from Lakeland, FL, where the format I was broadcasting was available 24/7 - much to the displeasure of WAPN management, who wanted a captive audience for their format. Antennas appeared all over town in the next few weeks, although a lot of them may have been for Tampa Bay and not Lakeland. But still, the timing was after my show, and I had really good ratings.
 
More friends in the past have shown interest than folks these days with so many other free-time distractions. Some are intrigued by the science behind it and have checked it out and contacted me when they've gotten good catches.
 
Thanks for the responses....

I can relate to each of them. The "what is that you're listening to", the tweaking of a crummy radio or providing a new one to provide previously impossible reception, the indifference, the "being tolderated", etc. Been there, done all of those!
 
I am 25 years old. I managed to get one friend - my only real friend at the time - into CB radio, ham radio, and then DXing. Although I had been interested in it since age 10, but did not get my license until age 15, he became interested in it at age 14 and got his ticket the same year. I only really did under his influence. He also DX'ed AM, FM, and TV, and even joined the WTFDA. I remember it being nice to have somebody local and my age to talk to about DX'ing. We used to always talk about it in school, getting in depth into discussions about tropo openings and power supplies, much to the dismay of some our teachers, whom I am guessing were annoyed with the technicality of our language. He practically abandoned all radio-related hobbies soon after getting his driver's licenses and moving on to more typical teenage interests, however.

My father responded for the most part positively to my hobby, having shown something of an interest in DXing in his younger years. My mother was also supportive, but not as interested.

I remember Bruce Elving substituting for our 9th grade math class once. I had been in contact with him by E-mail, and having one of North America's foremost FM DX'ers for a substitute teacher is nothing short of an amazing coincidence. He gave me copies of Popular Communications and Monitoring Times and asked the class what he should carry on the translator he owned. They said KDWB.

When I describe my hobbies I usually include "DXing", which I invariably have to explain. Some people "get it" and are even somewhat familiar with it, while others think I am listening for the program content and not the "thrill of the chase".

Whenever a good tropo or skip opening occurs, I always post something about it on my Facebook status, as I have several friends on there who are DX'ers. I'm guessing most of my non-DX'ing friends either have no clue what I am talking about or wonder if I have gone crazy. Whatever the case, they rarely show enough interest to comment or even "Like" my posts. Perhaps this is due to their use of smartphones with apps like "IHeartRadio" and others that take out the magic of receiving far-off radio stations.
 
I've been a DX'er off and on for my entire life starting with a cheap transistor radio I was given for Christmas by my grandmother as a very young kid. I quickly found out that the big old Magnavox tube stereo furniture in the living room was a much better DX machine being connected to the rooftop antenna then. Thus began my experience.

My parents weren't much interested (my Dad a bit as he had owned and old Sharp FW-507 with shortwave bands) and my Mom just listened to the locals in Washington DC during the day (WGAY, WPGC, WEAM, WEEL, etc) I kept at it and had a few friends who sorta dabbled in radio a bit them, but one big experience happened when a friend's Uncle had us over one day and I spotted his big 'ol Zenith Transoceanic. I was then hooked for sure!

Fast forward many years, and having been married a number of years now, I got back into DX'ing more seriously with some decent tuners and good quality antennas, and I've gotten my wife listening some now. She never was a radio person at all, but when I began to pull in distant stations, and especially foreign language broadcasts she found an interest in it too. Not to the degree of mine, but she does enjoy listening and when we travel for business, I always take a radio along to "see whats there" while we are in the motel/hotel. Being that she speaks Spanish fluently, that is a great help in identifying those Spanish language broadcasts too!
 
It had to've been fifty years ago, when my Mom yelled at me.

Mom is 93 now. I'm sure she both remembers and forgets the admonition she once gave me. At the time, I had reassured her and Dad that I was merely DXing in their basement. And I really tried as best as I could to explain what DXing was all about.

Mom didn't want to hear it that one day. 'Clean up that basement!' , she hollered. 'It's all full of DX!'
 
I used to have a bedroom with plenty of DX during my younger days; with the aforementioned Onkyo tuner in a stereo console, the dipole antenna spread out and taped onto my ceiling, another antenna next to a window that picked up a small 3 kW station 60 miles away...
This was in a rambler-style one level house. No outdoor antennas were allowed outside or on the roof so I had to deal with indoor antennas. I did picked up nice tropo and E skip with this dipole on the ceiling in northern VA as far south as Wilmington, NC(tropo opening), Fargo, ND, as well as Houston Houston. I never thought about using a "rabbit ears antenna" at that time even though, the tape on the ceiling didn't damage the paint. Hardly did any AM DX which I regretted not to.
 
I'm also a member of the "taped antenna" club. As a freshman, I was in a dorm room....top floor of a 3-story building....with a steel and concrete beam as part of the ceiling just over the bed on my side of the room. I had a wire antenna taped onto it and connected to my Halicrafters S-120. It was awesome!

Later, before moving off campus for my last two years, I was in another dorm. This was an older building, where a steel water pipe running through the room did the trick....with equally spectacular results!
 
Not one relative interested in DX or Ham Radio for that matter.

In high school, I was lucky enough to have a best friend who was also a DXer, however we made sure not to discuss the hobby around any of the girls we dated. I guess that made us closet DXers. :D
 
Icangelp said:
I guess that made us closet DXers. :D
Click to expand...

Good thing for websites like this where we can all come out and realize there are thousands of others just like us! ;D
 
When I was a kid and doing DXing, my mom thought I was either going to ruin the radio, my hearing. Or both

She was always disturbed by it. "Normal people don't do that".

That's been replaced by "Find a station and I MEAN SOMETHING THAT ACTUALLY COMES IN!" by my wife.

I tried to get my daughters interested. But if there's no music on AM, well, that's useless.

They all think I'm nuts......

We need to start a support group......
 
Bongwater said:
That's been replaced by "Find a station and I MEAN SOMETHING THAT ACTUALLY COMES IN!" by my wife.
Click to expand...

Or, in the words of my dad when I was a teenager.... "What is that dogfight you're listening to?"

That was a dual use phrase of his. He used it whether I was DXing or listening to top 40 radio. ;D
 
That is funny! My wife is also very intolerant of anything that isn't crystal clear. I can be listening to the hash and fuzz, just trying to get a TOH ID, and she will ask "Why are you listening to static?"

I almost forgot on the topic of this thread, that a couple years ago, a good friend stayed with us for a weekend and brought his 10 year old son along. He was fascinated by all the old radios I have restored and displayed around the house, so I passed along an old Realistic portable shortwave that I'd put a million miles on. Last I heard he was still enjoying it regularly.
 
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