I became interested in radio after inheriting my
grandfather's collection of old radio spares in the early fifties.
At that time there was a tremendous amount of World War II surplus
equipment around and many shops all over the country selling it.
In Liverpool there was "Super Radio" which had a small
shop in Whitechapel and a large old house in the suburbs in Rathbone
Road which I recall was surrounded by a veritable mountain of
stuff that was being systematically broken up for its copper content.
I recall wobbling home on my bike with all sorts of goodies which
I tried to get working ("18 sets", "19 sets",
SCR522s etc.). There was also a shop in Brownlow Hill which dealt
in similar stuff and I remember staggering home with a T1154 from
there. My first receiver was probably an old pre-war set which
tuned down to 11 metres and on which I used to listen to Australian
broadcast stations and puzzle over the origin of the huge number
of musical tuning signals. I eventually graduated to an R1155
which I bought, already modified, from my school teacher for £3
in about 1954. About this time a friend and I bought a couple
of "17 sets " which had been used by men operating Searchlights
during the war. These were beautifully designed sets operating
in the VHF TV band and working very well into the standard TV
aerials of the day. Soon after, I spotted for sale some receivers
called R206 Mk I for £20, and after saving up, purchased
one which arrived on a lorry in an enormous crate. I still have
this set which I reckon is the best wartime receiver ever made.
In the early sixties I helped start up the University of Liverpool
Amateur Radio Society which used the callsign G3OUL. Shortly afterwards
after taking my morse test at the Liver Buildings I became G3PIY,
using homebrew transmitters with my R206. I converted various
surplus VHF transmitters and receivers and built an SSB 2 metre
rig with a QQV06-40A amplifier. In those days one usually operated
on a specific frequency in the 2 meter band using a government
surplus 8MHz crystal which had been taken apart and rubbed with
Vim to place the output clear of other band users. You generally
called CQ then optimistically tuned the band for a reply. I decided
to improve on this, and after obtaining various free samples from
Plessey Semiconductors, and using a bit of knowledge gained in
my job with a large Defence Contractor, I made a fully tunable,
frequency synthesised, 2 metre transceiver and with a homebrew
amplifier and managed to work lots of stations from Liverpool
as far as Switzerland. (I suppose this is commonplace today with
Japanese black boxes). See Story No.34 for a description of this
rig.While all this was going on I continued to mend TV sets and radios for neighbours and I still do 40 years later but I've had to extend my repertoire, since leaving the Defence Industry (because I now do it for a living) to virtually anything that works off electricity excluding washing machines! The smallest things I've tackled, I suppose, are electronic keyfobs and the largest to-date a plastic extrusion machine over 30 foot long and weighing 6 tons. The keyfobs were brought to the workshop but, naturally- to fix the latter, the machine being too big to go in the owner's car boot, I had to visit the factory.
Recognise anyone
in this picture from the 60s?