Let's Share Our Memories

[Stylo N M]

Hi,

I remember in the early 1970s when iI was just a young lad, nipping across the road to spend an evening or two with a lovely elderly lady who had a battery radio set. It was a little floor standing model which was whitish in colour.
One evening she opened up the back to show it to me, by this time my eyes were boggling. She switched on the set and put the lights out so iI could just see the valves glowing, iI don't think iI shall ever forget that moment.

I also remember her saying at the time, that it was getting difficult to obtain the AD38 7.5 volt battery for the low tension. A wonderful evening filled with excitement that will stay with me forever.

Paul.

[Biggles]

A Bush BAC31 perhaps?

[Stylo N M]

Hi,

Yes I reckon a BAC 31 sounds about right .

Paul.

It must have started for me when I got a Lego lighting up brick for christmas (I was 4) and mother said "I will be back soon after being in the kitchen", when she got back, the brick was lighted.

[Peter.N.]

In about 1949 when I would have been 10, my father bought a Sobelette radio to replace the old Lotus which He gave to me and I dismantled, the Sobell had a row of octal GT shaped valves the glow of which fascinated me and I would spend ages just staring in through the slots, it seemed to me somehow very comforting.

Peter

[Alan Stepney]

Just after the war we moved to outer London, and once settled in our new house, my father built a workshop in the attic.
In that he built some radios, and stripped down numerous ex-government items.
Naturally I spent time watching him and soon was building (with help) crystal sets.
Then one valve amplifiers for them, then 2, 3 etc valve sets.

However, a crystal set THAT I HAD MADE, using the bed spring as an aerial, whilst wearing headphones (and hiding under the sheets), was a fantastic experience. I doubt that anything I have built since has given me as much pleasure.

[HamishBoxer]

Being on a bus aged 10/11 and an elderly gent next to me on seeing I had an homemade crystal set offered me a set of headphones (I had none) plus other bits free for collection.

In those days it was generally safe to trust most strangers. The headphones are still here and are Dr Nespers (Berlin) not o/c either.

[Michael.N.]

Lights out, glowing valves. Or as I used to say: you can see the music making it's way through the valves, can't do that with transistors.
Probably my earliest memory was my older brother putting his Hofner bass Guitar through an old Radio. Sounded great. . . . but was obviously dreadful. Who cares, it was great at the time.
When I was around 12 I made a crystal set. Wonderful experience when it actually worked. Hard to beat running on fresh air.

[Radio Wrangler]

In about 1960 I was given an old battery radio. I remember being taken to town to get a 120V battery for it. The 1.5v LT jobs were available in the village.

The set was a Kolster Brandes table model with internal space for the batteries, long, medium and short bands. The case was wood, the tuning dial was three 180 degree arcs with the tuning knob on a shaft sticking through the window in the centre of the arcs. I think there must have been a Jackson ball drive in there.

I'd been given a kit for christmas and one of it's projects was a radio for long and medium waves and I'd asked if there were short waves. As an answer, Grandad got the old set out of his shed and gave it to me. He thought you had to use special wire for aerials 'Aerialite' and had to zig-zag it in the attic to fill as much space as possible. Setting it up was fun. On the shortwave arc on the dial, bolder segments indicated bands like 'xx metres' and 'amateur'

So I'd like to find out what model this was. I've trawled through the radiomuseum site and seen nothing with a photo that matches it, though there are many without photos. The valves were all octal, red, Mullard in the D**3* series, but the radiomuseum site says KB used Mazda types. It must have had a new set at some time, I suppose.

Any hints gratefully received.

David

[raditechman]

When I was a small lad our second wireless set was a Murphy A26 (1st was a Ferranti Nova).
I discovered that if I took the sound box from our 78rpm gramophone and held the needle against the tuning knob on the Murphy A26 and spoke into the sound box while the radio was tuned to a station with an unmodulated carrier I could hear myself through the radios speaker. This was even more fun if someone was listening in another room on an extension speaker.
I guess possibly that the vibrations produced by my speaking to the sound box diaphram went along the tuning shaft directly to the tuning capacitor causing the vanes to vibrate and modulate the carrier.
Anyway whatever produced it I always remember doing it. It did not work on the Ferranti probably because the tuning gang was not direct shaft to the tuning knob.

John

[Stylo N M]

Hi john,

That's an interesting story fastenating

Paul.

[G6Tanuki]

In my very-early-teens I went with my parents on holiday to Aberystwyth, and being bored, sloped off to the town-dump which was located behind "Pen Dinas" hill/monument.

From there, I acquired bulging pocketfuls of valves from various cast-off TVs/radios. These included a number of 1.4V battery-filament types [1T4/1S5/3V4] which I brought home with me and then researched 'so what can I do with these?'.

A few 1960s-era ~~Practical Wireless~~ 2-valve-regenerative designs and a pair of DLR5 headphones scrounged from my brother led me to discover the 80-metre amateur-band and the joys of setting the regeneration to that 'just-so' point where I could resolve CW and SSB.

This in turn led on to my regularly driving a Pye C12 transceiver on the 5.mumble MHz national radio net with my school's army-cadets, blowing all my pocket-money on a Stewart-Warner built "TCS12" receiver, several PCRs and R209s, investing a good slice of my student-grant on an AR88D [which I still have] and a subsequent career in the communications business.

I also learned early the issues of 'live chassis' stuff when I tried to connect a crystal-set to the AC/DC audio amplifier [EF37/CL33/CY31] scavenged from a 1950s record-player. There was a *LOUD* bang and the entire house was plunged into darkness, which did not make me popular.

[stevehertz]

My first experience was not a constructional one - that came later - but of hiding under the bed clothes listening to RL on a small Japanese transistor set bought from John James in Hednesford. Radio and TV shops were wonderful places in those days, lots of tiered displays, radios, TVs, radiograms, record players, tape recorders, and always a well dressed salesman wandering around to help, switch things on, tell you all about them, easy terms available etc. What memories..

[threeseven]

Having always been electronic curious as a child, my epiphany occurred when I came home from school one afternoon to discover the 'TV repair man' deep in the internals of the family set. To the eyes of a 12 year old there were all sorts of strange procedures going on, valves glowing, weird patterns on the screen etc, and I also found the smell wonderful! I was captivated and assaulted the poor bloke with questions! From that point onwards I couldn't get enough of messing about with anything electronic or electrical and decided that's what I wanted to do when I left school.

[peter_scott]

Originally Posted by Radio Wrangler

Any hints gratefully received. David

Perhaps the AR21...??

http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/kolsterbr_ar21.html

Peter

[wireful3]

My first serious involvement after a childhood of fascination with electrical bits and pieces was seeing a circuit of a simple one valve receiver in a hobby magazine. It used a single 1C5 valve and running on batteries was relatively benign and so no hazard for a young schoolboy. It led me to the usual thing, saving pocket money to buy intriguing looking bits from the many component suppliers at the time. The most significant being plug-in coils that enabled me to listen on Short Waves. Hearing Radio Andorra and Brazzaville was quite an experience. Hearing a radio amateur from Argentina hooked me completely.

The hobby magazines at the time had lots of intriguing modifications to circuits and I dabbled with them but the most useful experiments were with reaction for the regenerative set I had built. Most of them I remember were related to removing hand effects and getting smooth control.

These early dabblings have left me with a tendency to look for ingenious and simple solutions rather than brute force microprocessor and big computer answers. I often wonder whether I miss out because of this but I feel big computers should be used for really big problems. Somehow using a microprocessor to synthesise a local oscillator or a few switches seems wrong.

I have also started thinking about the very early experiments and one thing that my schoolboy experiments has done is to understand the Lodge 'N'circuit. It hs been derided often since it was published but I am convinced I know what it does. What is more satisfying is that I am sure it did all he claimed but unfortunately not in the way he said. At the time though I am not sure that anyone else understood it either.

Hindsight is marvelous.

[electronicskip]

I remember when i was a small child having to walk up the lane to go to a friends house to watch Playschool on BBC2 as our tv was not equipped to receive it.

[HamishBoxer]

I also remember a "dump",not what you would call a quarry near a field in Whiston Rotherham where i lived containing many brand new army surplus components.Resistors and capacitors plus switches from what i can think.

All sealed in boxes and waxed waterproof paper.

Oh the joy of opening them all and maybe to this day have one or two left.

[unitaudio]

In about 1974 my uncle Robin bought one of the big Rotel RX-series receivers. It was black fronted and had the ribbed plastic ends on the fascia. The numerals on the radio dial lit up in yellow I think. I was about 5 at the time and I remember being mystified as to where the sound was coming from. There was clearly music playing in the room but it didn't appear to be coming from the Rotel. This was the first time I'd experienced external speakers (the only radio we had at home back then was a Ross portable which lived on top of Dad's long-inoperative Raymond radiogram) but I remember thinking this whole hi fi stereo malarky was overrated! How wrong I was...

Regards,
Paul

[Radio Wrangler]

Peter was exactly right. K-B AR21 and the photos that number produced have had me in fits of nostalgia for a week!

We all know where this sort of beginning leads to, don't we?

Many thanks,
David