Radios wrongly depicted in TV Progs

[Yorkie]

David, I would have thought you being a licenced ham would have been interested in the military stuff, but there yer go.

Lawrence.

Such interest as I had, only really extended to adapting military sets to use as short-wave receivers.

In my teens and 20s like most in the 50s and 60s, a lot of ex military stuff passed through my hands - 1155s in particular, (and 19 sets too), which like many of my generation, I only saw as 'doner sets' to be spruced up and made presentable in a domestic setting, or stripped down for useful bits then the rest discarded. The sort of things you bought because you couldn't afford a decent set such as an Eddystone EA12 or even a 640. I once stripped an 1155 down to just the coils, switchery and dial and rebuilt it with B9 valves, plating over the holes where the octal valves had been and re-wiring it. It was based on an excellent article in the long since defunct Short-Wave Mag. I fitted an output stage, speaker, power supply, S meter and so on, and a new front panel. Much to my surprise and relief it performed straight off and was much livlier that before it was modded. I later sold it at a radio rally, and rather wished I'd kept it.

I imagine that most 1155s around today will have been modded in some way as when the surplus market was awash with them, and articles on improving them for amateur use abounded in mags such as PW - mostly stripping out the redundant DF stage and putting a PSU and audio stage in the space. I doubt that anyone ever considered that future generations would see them as 'iconic' or evocative of Lancaster bombers limping home over Germany and France on one engine, and few cold have afforded to buy one just to put on the shelf and gather dust. My son has the naval version which has a different model number, and I think has a steel rather than alloy chassis and cabinet.

The nicest set that passed through my hand was a 128 set (I think). A little B7G valved miniature RX and TX combo, which I think was post-war and made well into the 1960s. A firm called AH Supplies in Sheffild sold then for £7.50 each for the TX & RX. From memory they covered the 160 & 80M portions of the amateur bands, AM/CW. (Few amateurs or SWLs could find room for a CR100 or any of the other great lumps).

As a schoolboy, there were lots of 38 sets around and we often played with them as 'walkie talkies'. All highly illegal of course. I've probably mentioned more than once that we often truanted from school to go to the Army dump at Ruddington on the outskirts of Nottingham, where thousands of WW2 tanks and amphibous DUKWs ('Ducks') were parked up. We'd go to 'Wollies' to purloin a few tools - hammers, junior hacksaws, screwdrivers, then crawl under the security fence at Ruddington and set about the tanks. The lids on the turrets has a flat iron strap welded across to keep vandals out, but which we made short work of that. Then we got into the tanks - you could swing the turret round, raise and lower the gun barrel, an when was time for tea, out last activity would be to remove anything that could be removed - Morse keys, periscope prisms etc, which would be then be taken to school the next day to be sold as souvenirs.

What always stuck me when we sat as a 'crew' in all the seats in a tank, was how very small they were for kids, let alone grown men. The driver was somewhere behind the front 'mudguard'. What preoccupied us most was 'how did they go to the loo'? The vast site was patrolled by soldiers, but really, there were so many kids crawling all over this stuff that I think they gave it up as a bad job. Occasionally we got chased, fearing we might be shot in the back, with kids yelling 'that one's a Gerry', putting the fear of God up eveyone! Made no difference - we'd be back again a week later.

In later life, I sat as a magistrate for 20 years, much of it in the youth court. Often the prosecutor would read out a littany of crimes that some kids was alleged to have committed, saying: 'basically, this boy is out of control - trunating from school, and his recent spree took place over a three week period'. I used to sit impassively, trying my best to look sternly magisterial, but thinking 'three weeks? What's the matter with kids today - I'd have done all that in a single day'. As to truanting, so long as it was the odd day here and there, I think the teachers were glad to see the back of us, with class sizes of 48. We'd just put a tick in the register the following day when he wasn't looking.

All a lifetime away - much more fun than playing with 'virtual' tanks on a Nintedo war game that kids today have to make do with. We never thought it was unlawful - only mischievous. The odd thing is that once we got to fifteen and left school, all this malarkey stopped without anyone's intervention - we just thought "well kids do that stuff, and I'm not a kid anymore - I'm a grown up".

Ho hum, rambling again...