About IanJohnston.com
AN EARLY AGE
From a very early age, I loved tinkering with anything mechanical, electrical, or electronic. During my early teens, I often repaired old car radios, 8-track cartridge players, and cassette players for my dad’s car repair business. I did get paid — though not much — but it was always about the fun and challenge.
Into my early teens, home from school I often "worked" out of the family garage building wind powered go-carts, lawnmower engine powered go-carts, lawnmower engine powered kiddie pushbikes, 50cc moped engine & frame re-builds for myself & friends. My teenager years were great fun but, sadly, no photos from those years.
Later, my dad moved into the CB and telecommunications trade, and although I was still at school, I helped out by repairing and upgrading CB radios, amplifiers, and power supplies. Around that time, I also took up the guitar and started building my own amplifiers and effects pedals, which pushed my understanding of electronics even further.
80's COMPUTERS
My move into computers came through a schoolmate who loaned me his Sinclair ZX81 in 1981. Not long after, I bought my own Sinclair ZX Spectrum. I became deeply interested in both hardware and software — building my own EPROM programmer, modifying my Spectrum, and even writing a stock control program for my dad’s business.
After leaving school, I joined the family business, where I spent most of my time repairing and upgrading CB radio equipment.
CARS IN THE 80's
As soon as I got my driver’s license, I was hooked on cars — especially Mk2 and Mk3 Ford Escorts. Around age 20, I rebuilt my first engine: a 1600cc Ford Crossflow, re-bored with new pistons and a Kent high-lift camshaft. There was a group of us who cruised around the local town — great friends, great cars, and great memories. Those really were the best of times.
OIL INDUSTRY
At 19, I joined an oil service company specializing in manufacturing electronic drilling instruments and controls. I started as a technician and moved up through several roles — Technician, Electronics Engineer, Technical Support Group Leader — eventually becoming R&D Manager, responsible for all electronic design and managing a team of software engineers.
The company was small enough that we did everything in-house — from analogue and digital circuit design to PCB production, software development, system testing, installation, and commissioning. We handled data acquisition, communications, power supplies, PLCs, SCADA, and instrumentation. We designed and built our own consoles, panels & cabins and deployed our systems worldwide.
MUSIC
Music remained a big part of my life. I joined a local 14-piece soul band as the resident tech guru and FOH (front-of-house) sound engineer. I could often be found elbows-deep in Hammond organs, mixing desks, power supplies, and amplifiers — soldering iron in hand. That experience opened up a whole new world of audio electronics for me.
MOTORCYCLE TRIALS
By the late 90s, I’d also become involved in motorcycle trials. I created a webzine called TRIALS ACTION, which became the world’s largest and most-read online magazine dedicated to motorcycle trials. It attracted around 15 paid advertisers and ran successfully for four years before I sold the site and domain names in 2001.
(No, I didn’t become a dot-com millionaire!)
Here's a snapshot from the website in 2000 courtesy of the Wayback Machine.
HOME ELECTRONICS
In 2005, I stepped away from hands-on electronics and took a desk job (still within the oil industry) at another company. I also gave up my sound engineering duties. However, after a few years, I realised how much I missed the workbench and soldering iron. So, I built a home workshop — and got back to having fun.
That was the beginning of www.IanJohnston.com.
The site started as a hand-coded page running on a home-built web server over a DSL line. As traffic grew, I moved it to a dedicated external server — but after a few unreliable hosting experiences (and a couple of companies going bust), I brought it back in-house. Today, it runs on my own self-hosted web server over a 900/100 Mbit fibre connection here at home.
HOME BUSINESS
Around 2018, I began designing and selling my own electronics products part-time — including the PDVS2mini Precision Digital Voltage Source — and shipped them worldwide to customers including CERN.
In 2024, I semi-retired from the oil and gas industry and sold the PDVS2mini design rights to WryTech (Germany). These days, I spend more time in the workshop, tinkering with new ideas and repairing test instruments for my YouTube channel.
YOUTUBE CHANNEL
Join me here and on my YouTube channel, where I revisit old projects, experiment with new technologies, and generally have fun with electronics and software.
As my tagline says:
“Because it feels good to repair stuff.”
PHOTOS
My current workshop:
Home made benches (40mm worktops) & heavy duty shelving.
The rest of the workshop is all storage and my web/email server rack.
The workshop & house is fully alarmed, secure and we have dogs.
A batch of PDVS2mini's on the workbench.
Thats me on the far right circa 1988 building & testing a DRILLING COMPUTER for an offshore platform.
In the 90's we developed touchscreen SCADA systems.
Photo: Rowan Gorilla Jack-up. Intellution Fix32 Scada, driven by Z80 powered hardware designed by me
Hobby - Soundman & "Mr. Fix-It" for 14-piece Soul Band "Souled Asylum"
Trials - My 1991 Beta Zero, 1993 GasGas 250 & 1999 Montesa 315R
My early 1978 Escort 1300 (1600cc), my 1980 red Escort MkII RS2000 & late 1978 white Escort MkII RS2000.
The white one by far my favourite.....and fastest!
Me on stage 1994 playing in a Country band
My website "Trials Action" from 2000
