View Single Post
Old 14th Jun 2010, 12:23 am   #9
Lincsbodger
Retired Dormant Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: lincoln
Posts: 1
Default Re: Birketts in Lincoln

Hi

I stumbled on this forum whilst looking for info on an HMV 1126 valve radio.

I used to work for Burkitts in the early 1970's. It was a fabulous time to be 18 and a fabulous place to work if you were mad on electronics, like I was.

The shop at 25/26 The Strait is incredible. When i was there it went up 3 floors and back at last 150 feet. There was literally a couple of hundred tons of electronic components in there, anything you could imagine, from unmarked Plessey 4 bit microprocessors to ex-WD 1126 radio sets. Every room, every corridor, every staircase was piled floor to ceiling with boxes.

In the 1970's , John had contacts at Marconi GEC, and was buying untested and sometimes unmarked semiconductors by the skipful. We built our own test gear, i spent many hours testing diodes, thyristors, triacs, zeners and all sort of transistors. We would sell them in mixed bags.

Similarly, he would buy vast, huge amounts of discreet components - resistors, caps, coils, all sorts. We would set up two long tables with about 50 boxes of random components in one of the rooms at the back, then you went along the row with an A4 sized zip bag, sticking a pinch of each in.These 'mixed component' bags sold like hot cakes at £1 each. (remember this was 1970!!)

It was a stunning, unique experience. I started playing with electronics at the age of 10 using valves, and whilst there got unlisted play with transistors then 74 series IC's. We were building Disco lighting such as ring counter and sound to lights YEARS before the big boys such as Pulsar Light of Cambridge was.

Unfortunately, the golden age of amateur electronics is over, never to be repeated. You cant really get the components anymore, and havent been able to for 20 years. I used to get Practical Wireless - there was always something in each issue to build, over the years i built all sorts of stuff. The one i remember the best was a sound activated flash trigger. My dad was a photographer, we took some amazing pictures of balloons and bottles bursting 1/5000 of a second after the bang.

Burkitts attracted some seriously clever blokes as well. There was a guy called Joe Rose, a slow scan TV fanatic, he actually owned an entire BBC Outside Broadcast Unit complete with 4 cameras and a 2 inch tape unit and mixing desk. There was another guy who worked at the Medical Physics Dept atthe hospital, he woudl come up with circuits for us to build and test, a seriously clever bloke. During the Winter of Discontent he invented an Inverter using two OC25 power transistors that would drive a 6 foot fluorescent tube off a car battery. We built a few and the sold like hot cakes, couldnt make them fast enough, and we sold them as kits as well!!

I went on the do TV repair as well at other places, and then had a 20 year career in Local Government IT, jumping on the IT bandwagon in the early 1980's, when jobs were plenty and the IT path was paved with gold.

I recently built a conservatory, and we wanted an old radio in it, i got one at auction, its sort of worked, and i came to the conclusion after several weeks of messing the W77 had lost emission, and in my search for one i arrived here. I have now replaced it and the radio works pretty well. You never forget how to fix them.

I pop in to see John sometimes, the shop is open Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, although it long stopped being a shop, its really a drop in centre for old radio hams and tv engineers to have a natter. he sits in there holding court, and a long stream of old friends call by.

Bukitts was a legend, there wasnt another shop like it, and there never will be again.
Lincsbodger is offline