The old man on the left - "old man" in the double sense of the word - that's me. My name is Hans-Dieter Teichmann. I'm the person behind DJ2PJ alias OHØJWH or OHØP (2005).

Since the early fiftees, good friends and neighbours call me "Hadi", short for the somehow long-winded "Hans-Dieter".  My hometown's boy scouts had needed a handy nickname for me for camp life. Later, the good old West Gulf DX Club changed this name into "Hipshot Hadi", certified by a nice diploma. Thanks!  Although - upon my honour!  I've never had and never will have a gun in my hands. Never been on a war path either (hmm... maybe, except when hunting DX...). It must have been my much too fast and crazy vibroplex keying of the fiftees that had led to this name.

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). 

Of the 1,759 radio contacts established by DJ2PJ in 2010 1,402 were in (mostly highspeed) CW, followed by SSB (84), the PSK-modes (79), RTTY (33), and the MFSK modes, including JT65A (4).

   DJ2PJ's private corner... 

Born in 1935 in Elbing (now Elblag, Poland), grown up and school education in Nienburg (North Germany).

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 design, 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. "Conciousness imperialism", "domestication of one's conscience", "passepartout justification", as Martin Walser said in his famous 2011 Harvard speech).

Just a few of my thoughts:

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

The more you get to know - the more lonesome you'll be.

I wish I could plant a tree and be its roots.

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 little more than a dozen years ago, that I started collecting for the DXCC in RTTY, having exactly 308 entities confirmed now (January 2012), 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 basic 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 (after changing the rules...). Since 14th December 2007, we have another new entity, in this case 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 all newcomers, including the new PJ-entities and South Sudan (STØR) which became a new one on 14th July 2011.  But  membership in the DXCC? DXCC has developed a dynamic of its own which is, as I feel, extremely  counterproductive to the welfare of chasing DX if not to the welfare of amateur radio as a whole. I have given up membership in the DXCC for ever,  in silent protest against it - as in my eyes this sort of "enjoying" DX has put  amateur radio on a wrong track, with just one profiteer: ARRL and cash flow - ruling over thousands upon thousands of DX-lemmings all over the world and treating them like fools. I'm always ready to discuss this in more detail...

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.

I am a member of the Deutscher Amateur-Radio Club (DARC), the High-Speed Club (HSC; #258), the European DX Foundation (EUDXF), the German DX Foundation (GDXF; #235), the Feld Hell Club (#198), the European Phase Shift Keying Club (#1175), the Rhein Ruhr DX Association (RRDXA), and I am proud to have been a member of the good old TOPS CW Club (#500) where "fists made friends". What a pity, that the TOPS does not exist anymore...

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 100,000 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 first 1,000 QSOs on or after my 75th Birthday on 19th October 2011 have been certified by a special QSL:

"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 eQSLs then? See the point?

Thanks for your interest and patience.

You can look up my postal and e-mail addresses clicking on "Impressum/Editor's Note" at the bottom of this page.

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Last Revision: 25th March 2012

Impressum/Editor's Note