About Me

Hi, my name is Stephen Davies and I am a qualified Electronic Engineer, the majority of my skills learned through a career in the local Automotive industry with Smiths Industries and Lucas at Ystradgynlais. “Tick-Tock” as it was affectionately known and later on with Caerbont Automotive Instruments and Sumitomo. So if my face is familiar, we may have met before in our working careers.

I have been operating my own business full-time for since December 2009. I have always been interested in Radio and Television and tuning the wavebands to see if I could receive any extra channels that no one else could pick up.

When I was a child in the 1970’s, I would be intrigued to find that at night I could tune into allsorts of distant stations on my medium wave transistor radio – I would listen to American football matches or pop music from stations like Radio Caroline or Radio Luxembourg.

After watching an episode of the comedy show  ‘On the buses’ where Stan and Jack altered their cab radios picking up the planes and the Police I borrowed my grandmothers multi-band short wave radio, took the back of and started randomly altering the tuning circuits to see if I could do the same!!

When my father came home to Wales in 1976, (not understanding any Welsh) we were very disappointed with the choice of television programmes. I started experimenting with the old dual 405 line / 625 line black and white TV – to my father’s annoyance – but with the aerial in the VHF socket I was able to find BBC1 West from Bristol and we were able to watch the English transmissions!!

When I started college, I would use some of my grant money to buy various hobby and trade magazines like, ‘Practical Electronics’ and ‘Television’ and started to teach myself about aerials, television and radio reception and making gadgets.

I carried on with my Education and early automotive career in the 1980’s with the television and radio reception becoming a hobby. As money was tight, I made my own experimental aerials, filters, amplifiers and power units

In the summer months, I soon learned that on the VHF waveband, the same group of channels that I received the original ‘BBC west’ on, I could now receive stations all over Europe and Beyond, from Spain and Portugal in colour!! in the south to Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, Romania even as far as Russia in the East – this was called ‘Dx-ing’ all dependent upon varying atmospheric conditions, stations might only appear for seconds or minutes, so I bought various technical books and subscribed to magazines like ‘Television’; “Practical Wireless” and “Shortwave magazine” to identify things like; station logos, clock designs, News programme names, time differences, Country border (weather) maps etc.

One special compilation magazine was called “Out of Thin Air” which inspired me so much that years later I would call my company after it!!

As I started to earn more money, I would always be improving my set-up. I built a 35 feet ‘guylined’ mast with steps so I could walk up it  and service or change the aerials or amplifiers – with just a rope tied around my waste and then around  the mast!!

 With regard to Satellite TV my first experiments were in the late 1990’s. I bought an ex-sky satellite dish and analogue Amstrad box for £20. My bedroom window faces south. I found that my dish slotted nicely in an old wicker chair which I duly placed in front of the window. I found the Sky satellite (at 19 degrees east then) and tuned in the channels manually. I turned the dish slightly and altered its height fractionally and found ‘Hotbird’ at 13 degrees east and tuned these channels in –to my surprise there were many of adult content we shall say! Same as for Thor the Scandinavian satellite at 1 degree west. As I turned the dish towards the south west, propping the chair on books to change its height!!, I  tuned in more channels – limited to a total of 100 by  the box! Fun days with the analogue satellites and not much encryption!!

I have now turned my hobby into a full-time business!

Likes: walking, cycling, running, sunshine, positive people with a good sense of humour, open minded people with worldly views, good story tellers, travelling the globe, live music and real ale, all animals, having money and loyal friends

Dislikes: conflict, wars, filter-tipped cigarettes, swearing -  especially from females, rude and discourteous people, grey days, bad service and shoddy workmanship

Core values that are important to me: fulfilment, integrity, happiness, confidence, sense of humour, fun, commitment, excellent service and honesty.

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