I was interested in radio at an early age when we had a commercial AM/FM receiver. I was listening in and the goal was to listen to far away stations. As I was in MW, the farest stations were from Egypt, Algeria, Italy...

But the real start was in 1998, when I started tuning HF. I was listening to SWBC such as Deutsh Welle, BBC Arabic... Little by little, I bought a new receiver (AKAI AR-1205), and I became a radio monitor for some radio stations. This pushed me to learn more about propaguation, antennas...

One year after, I bought a new receiver which was RadioShack DX-375 and I became
interested in tuning to clandestine radio stations especially in war time (Afghanistan,
Iraqi war in 2003...). It was amazing!
In 2002, the big jump... I dicovered by chance that there is something called "amateur radio" and that we have an amateur radio station in our city (Sfax).
I contacted the station'manager, and I became a member in this scoot radio club.
Few months after, I bought an SSB Receiver by RadioShack Model DX398. Since that time I track DXPeditions (especially IOTAs), collect QSLs, use all modes (CW, PSK, RTTY, Hell...).

What I have to say is that this hobby pushed me to enlarge my experience, not only in radio but also in other domains like Web design, languages, culture... and the most important thing, the large number of friends from all over the world that I have, thanks to radio.

Dan Rolla, I1-12387 (MDXC/SWL Coordinator)