My Information
My interest in radio and television started when I was in Jr. High school in Norwalk, Ohio. I was the "geek" who repaired the televisions for the neighborhood. At that time, I was into CB Radio, but also collected military surplus radio gear to experiment with. I was an avid SWL (Shortwave Listener) and my small "shop" in the garage was covered with various wire and vertical style antennas. I had what some people called a small space alien setup. This was before the NASA space flights had become popular so there wasn't a common knowledge of "mission control". This is what some people have called my radio shack currently.
As the years went by, I became interested in continuing my radio knowledge and got interested in Amateur Radio. Although I passed the required test and obtained a Novice (beginners) license, I never renewed or upgraded it within the 2 year period you could do that. Because of this, it was non-renewable (at that time) and I just got out of the hobby. For the time being, at least. My interest continued though, and a couple of decades later, while living in Florida, I obtained the call KE4MDX and was a no-code Tech. Within a couple of months, I passed the code (CW) test and was a "Tech Plus" which gave me CW capabilities on the HF or SW bands.
Satellite Television
I also developed a new hobby while still living in Ohio known as satellite television. While working at a tv repair shop, we setup a 10 foot satellite dish in the backyard and begain watching television from space. Remember when it was called TVRO? That stands for TV Receive Only. The new common term for this is FTA now or Free To Air. It's basically the same thing, watching free television from space and even today, this is still an active hobby for me. I gave up my 10 foot dish when I moved to Iowa but still have the 31 inch dish for the Ku spectrum. I intend to see what kind of C Band I can get on the 31 inch dish. Experts say nothing, but I think I can tune it well enough to get quite a bit. Time will tell.
Computers
Later the computer came to being, remember the Comodore, Timex/Sinclar, and others? Very small computers by comparison. I took up that hobby as well thinking that some day it could be incorporated into my other hobbies. Yes, it did and it works quite well with all of them. This was a time before the internet and all you had were some BBSs to dialup into using 300 baud modems. Later, I'll expand more on this subject and some of the things I accomplished with this hobby.
My main HF rig which was purchased about 8 years ago on EBay and arrived in perfect condition at about half the retail cost. This rig has been an excellent radio for all HF bands on all modes without fail!