I first met RadioFan at Armstrong Elementary School in the 1964-65 school year. It was the school's first year of Grade 7 and I was the only Second Street Elementary School "graduate" to choose Armstrong over Cariboo Hill Junior High. It's not that I didn't want to grow up, but I just loved the "King of the Castle" feeling I'd had in Grade 6 at Second Street.
RadioFan was in Grade 6 and we did not meet until the school's Hobby Show, a new experience for me. But I went all out for it, bringing my best DX radio, QSL cards, record surveys, coverage maps, bumper stickers, DX log and the recent issue of a popular magazine that explained the ins and out of DX'ing solely on the standard AM broadcast band. That was where I learned about QSL cards -- KFBK-1530 Sacramento being my first -- including how to write reception reports to stations that they could actually check against their program logs, to verify your reception with a letter or QSL card.
I opened a lot of eyes to where you could take the hobby, and a group of us who were really caught by the radio bug, created the BDXC, Burnaby DX Club, in part because the Better Business Bureau had no record of the International Radio Club of America (IRCA), which many of us would later join, and meet still more like-minded people in Greater Vancouver. We went on to host the IRCA's 1970 Convention in North Vancouver.
The vast majority of DX'ers never get into Radio as a career, or even as a job. However, most on-air Radio folks of our generation have listened to long distance radio, not so much as DX'ers, but as an educational and mind-opening tool. Almost like having large numbers of respected pros as your own personal instructors.
I passed along my greetings personally this morning, but I do want to say a public "Happy Birthday" to RadioFan!