Dirk was
fascinated by electronics from an early age. It all
started in the 1970s with a "65 in 1 Electronic
Project Kit" he bought as a kid at the local Tandy
store. His first crystal radio receiver, building a small
transmitter and learning to etch his own printed circuit
boards sparked his interest in all things electronic. In
the early 1980s, the 6502 processor, used on the KIM-1
computer board, introduced him to machine code language.
The Commodore 64 lead him to programming in BASIC
language but tweaking his C-64 by writing machine code
for its 6510 processor was even more fun, although quite
elaborate. At the time, computers were still pretty
unknown to the general public. Stuff for nerds, and who
needs a computer anyway? Not quite, as history later
showed.
His adventure in electronics evolved
from vacuum tubes, still widely used when he was a kid,
over transistors and integrated circuits to
microprocessors, computers and programming. The rapid
evolution of electronics and digital systems in the 1980s
also led to his interest in all sorts of more advanced
equipment of which the complexity quickly exceeded his
technical knowledge to build it yourself. However,
operating such equipment is just as much fun as designing
and building electronic circuits, but the average citizen
could hardly buy such specialized and often expensive
gear, and had no need to use it anyway, unless you chose
a special profession where you got to work with the most
modern secure communications equipment.
In 1983, Dirk enlisted in the Army to
turn his passion for electronics and radio into a
profession. After training at the Center for
Transmissions and Electronics, he was assigned to the
Transmission Troops or TTR (i.e. Signal Corps). During
the Cold War, he was stationed twelve years in former
West Germany as part of the 1st Belgian Corps, serving in
the 17th TTR Company. In 1994, he was redeployed to
Belgium to serve in the 1st Mechanized Brigade HQ Coy 8/9
Line (today called Motorized Brigade). After the
establishment of CIS groups, he joined the 10th Group
Communications and Information Systems in 2003.
Dirk worked with a wide variety of
communications equipment and on some as technician. He is
also a veteran, and had the privilege of working with signals
units and military personnel from many countries during
both training and operations abroad. He retired after
serving 39 years in different signals units. In 2004, he
created the Cipher Machines and Cryptology website and
SIGINT Chatter blog to share his passion for
cryptography, military and intelligence history.
NOTICE
- Dirk is long retired and has no technical or
cryptologic knowledge about current classified
equipment or access to such devices, its users,
related services, organizations or manufacturers.
He is therefore unable to obtain information or
answer questions about such equipment. |