HAM RADIO | g3vjm

Amateur Radio & Electronics

In the late 1940s a neighbor a couple of houses away had a big aerial on the back of his car and at weekends he would be using a radio in his car. I would watch and ask questions and he explained 'Ham' radio to me. I then, with some help, built a crystal set for my bicycle. The aerial was attached to a bamboo pole fitted to the handlebars and I would cycle around the village listening to the Home Service on headphones. This may sound unlikely but it really did work, the secret being that we lived just a few miles from the Brookman's Park radio transmitter and we had enormous signal strength. I later found out he was the Station Manager for the Brookman''s Park transmitter

I remember someone locally was taken to court for 'stealing the Queen's electricity'. He had tuned circuits in his loft powerful enough to light the whole house.

The transmitter masts as seen in 1975 when I last visited Marshalswick

When we moved to Epsom Downs in 1951 I met Jon, his father was keen on radio but was not a licensed 'ham'. I remember he had a Hallicrafters SX24 receiver and we could hear all the taxi radio from New York on the 10 meter band during the good sun spot cycle in the early 1950s.

He built radios using the new fangled transistors that had become available. I learned about eletronics from him and built radios that really worked well and spent many hours listening to Radio Luxembourg. I built my own 'AVO' type test meter out of scrap and still have it today. My bedroom became my first workshop .

Me in the late 1940s working a short wave tuner MkIII from the First World War. Mine had a holder for a pocket watch not shown on the other photo from The Imperial War Museum.

Mum is trying to hide behind the radio

My bedroom in The Gap (an amazing house we lived in) in the 1950s). My test meter (black panel) and home made transistor tester (sloping panel) together with a 'Caby' multimeter I bought later. You can see I used all the empty photographic paper boxes for components

When we moved to Ashley Avenue in 1963 I decided to take the Amateur Radio exam. I bought the manual and skipped through it. A couple of weeks before the exam Peter - who knew far more than me about electronics - and I decided to go to the Andora region to do a bit of scrambling (easy climbing). We stayed in campsites and after a good meal and refreshments in the evening we read through the manual before falling asleep.

A few days after we got home I went up to London - Holloway Road Tech College- and took the exam which in those days was fully written. Typical question I remember ' Pierce and colpitts are two types of oscillator, discuss.'

I actually passed, but then had to learn morse before I could get a licence. I hated morse but didn't give up. In those days you had to go to Waterloo Bridge House to take the test, which I attempted 5 times over a 2 year period. On the next attempt all seemed to go well, but you had no idea how well really, as all sending and receiving were random groups of characters. First the letter groups and then the number groups, so you could not go back and make corrections. As I handed my paper in I said to the examiner 'This is the 6th time I have been here'. He didn't look at the paper but said 'I don't think I will be seeing you again'

I got my pass slip the next day!!

Just before I passed the morse they started a UHF morse free licence and I became G8AEH and built a 70 cm single valve CW transmitter to send CW to my friend Bill G3CTY about 1 mile away. He talked back to me on top band and we had a few QSOs.

Bill was very good making top band AM mobile transmitters with 3 valves and I made several over the next couple of years. My car at the time was a Citroen Bijou (see under cars). It had a fibre glass body but only a 6V battery. I used a couple of ADZ11 germanium power transistors to make the inverter which gave me just over 200V HT. I wound a helical antenna and the best contact I made was Owestry in Wales.

Not bad for about 8 Watts on AM.

These photo show my home made base statin rig that I used for the next few years. It covered top band and 80M with just AM modulation. It had 1200 volts on the PA and could easily give 100W. My receiver was an HRO and I worked all over Europe with it, but never got across the pond.

When I moved to Copthorne in '67 I set it up. Sadly not used much as house restoration and marriage in '68 took up most of my time. In fact I had no time at all for radio as I became self employed and it wasn't until the mid 80's I came back into the hobby. I bought a Yaesu FT290 and did lots on 2M SSB with a 9 element Tonna at around 20 feet. In those days the band was full and it was almost impossible to find a slot on FM.

After a couple of years I got back on HF. I bought a second hand Trio TS430 which I used for the next 20 years. I took it mobile around Scandinavia. My younger son Alaric was with the scouts on a world trip Jamboree in Korea. They had a special event station there and I worked them a couple of times from Oulu in north Finland on SSB 15M. Hope to put the QSL card up here when I find it.

We also took it on holiday camping in UK. Problem was that if you had a proper antenna as soon as you went on the air in the evenings other campers would bang on the motorcaravan saying they could not see their TVs, thinking I was a CBer.

I designed and made a small vertical antenna that didn't look much different from a normal car radio one at that time. It worked on 20, 15 and 10 quite well The best contact was to Vanatu in the South Pacific on 15 M, from a campsite in Wales, in pouring rain (well it was Wales !)

Crawley Amateur Radio Club

Whilst working at Redifon in the early 1960's it was proposed to start an amateur radio club which I nearly joined, but didn't as I left instead. It was started by Ron Vaughn, Jim Swift and John Pasrons I think.

Later when with Philips I visited a company called Cyfas in Guernsey, only to discover it was run by the engineers I knew from Redifon days. I was invited to come along to the Crawley Club and attended several Dinners. The club was very progressive with lots of professional engineers and took part in all the field days and contests. In the early 80's they got their own clubhouse in the Tilgate Recreation Centre and I joined the club. Derek Atter was the President and I took the post of vice chairman for around 15 or so years. Derek and I collaborated on several business projects, (see NPL and Geotek), he was a delight to work with.