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 led 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 Signal School, he was assigned to the Signal Corps. During the Cold War, he was stationed twelve years in former West Germany, serving in signal units. In 1994, he was redeployed to Belgium to serve in a mechanized brigade HQ Coy, and in 2003 he joined a CIS Communications and Information Systems unit.

Over the years, Dirk worked with a wide variety of communications equipment and on some as technician. He had the privilege of working with signal units and military personnel from many countries during both training and operations abroad. In 2004, he created the Cipher Machines and Cryptology website and SIGINT Chatter blog to share his passion for cryptography, military and intelligence history. Dirk retired after serving 39 years in signal units.