A portrait of radio amateur DJ2PJ

I received my amateur radio licence with the callsign DJ2PJ in 1954, at the age of nineteen, and it was in August 1955, that I made my first ever radio contact from my own station in my hometown Nienburg on the river Weser in North Germany. Since 1972, my wife Inge and I live in Münster (JN49kw), a village some 40 kilometres south of Frankfurt on Main, only a few minutes from the foothills of the beautiful Odenwald mountains and the lovely vineyards of Gross-Umstadt.

I'm a purist in radio operating skills and almost hate everything against the rules in this field, bad manners in DX pile-ups in particular. It is a bit astonishing that insufficient operating skills are not only a phenomenon of nowaday's amateur radio - they were already a problem in the fiftees when I started this madness. There always seem to have been the good and the bad boys... Small wonder that I felt obliged to write a handbook on amateur-radio operating very early in my radio life, trying to show how QSOs were made the right and more efficient way, and in more than one or two languages (1964).

I'm a notorious CW fetishist, who had tried to introduce a completely new, psychologically oriented approach of teaching and learning telegraphy. Another book (1965). It became the didactic basis for a study-course in morse code issued by the Deutscher Amateur-Radio Club (DARC) still today. Of the 1,759 radio contacts established by DJ2PJ in 2009 1,475 were in (mostly highspeed) CW, followed by the PSK-modes (96), RTTY (95), SSB (85), Hell (5), and the different MFSK modes, including JT65A (3).

DJ2PJ's private corner...

Born in 1935 in Elbing (now Elblag, Poland), grown up and visited schools in Nienburg.

Studies of Psychology, English and German literature (Hamburg and Marburg Universities). Free-lance science journalist, book editor for Umschau Verlag and Suhrkamp Verlag (with a focus on arts and picture-based books, literature, psychology, sciences...), book translator (H. Alfvén, E.C.M. Frijling-Schreuder, R.D. Laing, A. Prokopiou, and others). Lectureships in adult education institutions. Since 1972 director of examinations and publishing at a Frankfurt scientific institute for adult education, offering programmed examinations in the modern languages and sciences. German representative in European organizations for further-education testing (languages and informatics). Retired since 1998.

Married, 2 children, 4 grandchildren.

Hobbies beside amateur radio: Photography (with a focus on macro, portrait, nature, and landscape photography), flower, rock and water gardening, garden planning, cats, tortoises and turtles.

What I like beside amateur radio: my Family, lifelong learning, islands, classical music and traditional jazz, hiking, all facets of nature, the Odenwald, good but not-too-dry wines, vineyards (all seasons), Bavarian food and the people making it, neigbours with a soft spot for antenna aesthetics, dreaming on the sunny bench in my garden with a glass of Rosé or Riesling, my roses, my azaleas, all other flowers, the purr of a cat, the croaking of frogs in the garden pond... nearly everything...

What I really dislike: making war without being attacked, pseudo-learned politicians (they are the most terrible pest), Nazis and other brainless frogs without wigs, economical globalization and capitalists without social conscience (who treat humans even worse than other "raw materials" Mother Earth has to offer), the system of "political correctness" (which is neither "political" nor "correct", but a dirty synonym for insincerity, ignoring the truth, and a cloak for constant lying...).

Just a thought:

I wish I could redo everything in my past - with the knowledge and the feelings of today.

I'm extremely crazy about DX - unleashed, I am chasing rare DX-stations day and night. I could have served as one of Ivan Pavlov's dogs, I assume. Every strange or rare callsign makes my mouth water and my hands shake. The DX-virus caught me rather late in my radio life, but it finally caught me, no doubt, forever... From 2004 to 2006, I was happy to have each of the 335 entities of the ARRL DXCC-list worked and confirmed, though "only" in the so-called mixed mode, i. e. all modes taken together. As I had decided to officially count and claim only those countries and territories worked on my favourite mode CW, one DX-entity had still be missing (I bet you know which one...). It's only a dozen years ago, that I started collecting for the DXCC in RTTY, having exactly 300 entities confirmed now (June 2007), but not applied for anything...

And I'll not apply for anything anymore in the future, as I can neither understand nor follow ARRL's "strategy" to change important sections of their DXCC rules every few years, the criteria for becoming a DX-entity in particular. A game is as serious as its vital rules remain untouched in the process of the game. In July 2006, there were 337 DX-entities, with Montenegro as a natural and legitimate newcomer, but with Swains Island as - in my eyes - a manipulated, highly questionable one added to the list. Since 14th December 2007, we have another new entity, no doubt a legitimate one: Saint Barthélemy (FJ), which formerly belonged to the Saint-Martin entity (FS). As a passionate DXer, I have meanwhile worked Montenegro and Swains and got them confirmed. I worked Saint Barthélemy (TO5FJ), too, in RTTY first and then in CW, and I received a QSL only a few weeks later: QSLs for the wall, possibly for my ego, not for DXCC. I have finished membership in the DXCC for ever.

I've never belonged to the big guns, who would call large-scale antenna farms their own, a range of monoband yagis on sky-scrape towers, full-size verticals for the low bands with extensive ground systems, and the like. I've rarely produced an "outstanding signal". My first 250 DXCC-countries have been worked with simple wire and vertical antennas, from modest or even limited locations, and with relatively low RF-outputs. I erected my first yagi antenna in 1968 and I am still using a vertical antenna for 40 metres and the WARC-frequencies (see my station layout). I'm absolutely convinced that being a successful DXer is in the first place a matter of steadily optimized station logistics and operating skills, paired with a heart full of patience and endurance, and crowned by a bit more than a little bit of luck.

QSLs? I adore them. It is my policy to send a card to everyone working me, without waiting for a card: at least as far as DJ2PJ is concerned (I had to make other decisions regarding OHØJWH and OHØP, and for the callsigns of my IOTA-DXpeditions). I have sent off more than 80,000 DJ2PJ-QSLs in all the years and received more than 60% in reply.

Below, you will find a selection of cards of which you normally receive a copy when having worked me:

"The QSL is the final courtesy of a QSO!" Absolutely true. QSLs play an important part of defining amateur radio. Thanks to all those who are fellow-believers in this matter. Would you send plastic roses to your young lady? Not really? Do you like e-QSLs then? See the point?

Thanks for your interest and patience. Here is my address, in case you want to contact me by snail mail: