20-06-2023, 02:08 PM
I read this title differently.
I remember surviving in a few repair shops. The initial location was my family home where I had a repair base from about 13. Mostly it was cobbling together radios and TVs bought from jumble sales or donated by friends and relations when they cleared out attics and cellars having replaced the sets with more modern items.
There was a flurry of BBC band I only sets when ITV firsts appeared on band III.
In my later secondary school years I was roped into fixing hundreds of sets bought as scrap from Rediffusion by an older chum who set up a shop selling them off. These were delivered by pantechnicon and then it was a two or three day survival stint at the bench sorting and fixing the easy ones so that they could be sold quickly as we never had any money.
This sometimes led to 48 hour periods without much rest but we were young. A lot of solder was melted and drinks consumed in the wee small hours.
I remember buying very few spare parts, it was mostly salvage from the dead loss sets to fix the possible ones.
Oh, the stories I could tell about delivering and installing these old sets which often involved rigging aerials as well.
We were mentored to some extent by an ex merchant navy radio man who had a shop selling and repairing household appliances and radio/TV.
He had schools contracts and we often helped him install 100v distribution systems and the occasional house rewires.
We had fun, were possibly exploited to some extent, but we enjoyed the experiences. I survived and became an electronics apprentice but that is another story.
I remember surviving in a few repair shops. The initial location was my family home where I had a repair base from about 13. Mostly it was cobbling together radios and TVs bought from jumble sales or donated by friends and relations when they cleared out attics and cellars having replaced the sets with more modern items.
There was a flurry of BBC band I only sets when ITV firsts appeared on band III.
In my later secondary school years I was roped into fixing hundreds of sets bought as scrap from Rediffusion by an older chum who set up a shop selling them off. These were delivered by pantechnicon and then it was a two or three day survival stint at the bench sorting and fixing the easy ones so that they could be sold quickly as we never had any money.
This sometimes led to 48 hour periods without much rest but we were young. A lot of solder was melted and drinks consumed in the wee small hours.
I remember buying very few spare parts, it was mostly salvage from the dead loss sets to fix the possible ones.
Oh, the stories I could tell about delivering and installing these old sets which often involved rigging aerials as well.
We were mentored to some extent by an ex merchant navy radio man who had a shop selling and repairing household appliances and radio/TV.
He had schools contracts and we often helped him install 100v distribution systems and the occasional house rewires.
We had fun, were possibly exploited to some extent, but we enjoyed the experiences. I survived and became an electronics apprentice but that is another story.
Boater Sam.
