Tony Rogers
My introduction to the world of DXing came as a 14 year old in early 1976. As a sports fan, particularly football (soccer) and cricket, a friend told me about a local radio station that had regular commentaries and live reports from football matches. Not really having been a radio listener before, I found a rarely used transistor radio in a cupboard at home and one evening started looking for BRMB radio in Birmingham. During that initial tune-around on the MW band I didn't find BRMB, my attention was drawn to another radio station I stumbled across, Radio Prague in Czechoslovakia. Over the evenings that followed I heard other stations on MW such as Radio Moscow, Deutschlandfunk and Radio Tirana, and I was hooked! My parents bought me a shortwave radio a few months later and the journey continued!
The politics that international broadcasters spouted didn't interest me much, but the cultural, entertainment and sports programmes certainly did. Ever since my grandmother had bought me a "Children's Picture Atlas of the World" back in 1967, I had always been fascinated by the way of life in other countries, and the discovery of international broadcasting increased my desire to learn even more.
In the years that have followed, my interest has never waned. I have thoroughly enjoyed DXing and listening in general, and now in my retirement I have created DX Guides so that I can channel my enthusiasm into that. My influences are based on what we used to have: WRTH as it was under the various editors up to and including Andy Sennitt (my preferred format of the handbook), Sweden Calling DXers (a superb weekly roundup of the latest news), BBC Monitoring schedules (an excellent format and very informative), Jonathan Marks' Media Network and Finn Krone's World DX News (transcribing their DX news every week was a joy). I may not be able to recreate things as well as they did, but I always have these in mind when working on DX Guides.
And of course, through this project I have the added bonus of sharing the experience of DXing with the many friends I have made over the years, most of whom I have never met face-to-face but know so well thanks to email and other forms of modern communication. Old ways influence me, but I appreciate new ways too!
As well as radio, I also have other interests, including
· Long distance walking, particularly along the vast network of canals in Birmingham and the West Midlands
· Local History, particularly Birmingham and the West Midlands
· Railways, particularly current and past lines in Birmingham and the West Midlands
· Football (soccer): I support Birmingham City Football Club
· Cricket: I am a member of Warwickshire County Cricket Club (who are based in Birmingham)
· Music
My music interests include Birmingham and West Midlands pop/rock artists since the 1960's, such as Black Sabbath/Ozzy Osbourne, Judas Priest/Rob Halford, Roy Wood and Jeff Lynne (particularly their involvement with The Move, ELO, Wizzard, etc), Steve Gibbons, The Moody Blues, Slade, UB40, Duran Duran, etc. I also have a huge interest in artists like Bob Dylan, The Beach Boys (including Brian Wilson's solo work), Fleetwood Mac (including Lyndsey Buckingham's solo work), Led Zeppelin (and anything involving Robert Plant and Jimmy Page), The Kinks/Ray Davies, Runrig, The Beatles, Iris DeMent, and many many others.
