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Old 4th Oct 2010, 6:00 pm   #21
AC/HL
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Default Re: Telecomms blokes.

A friend of mine saw a job advertisement, in the Sun I think, for contract work in Saudi Arabia for C&W. 18 months later I returned home & got a job with Mercury or the "Mercury Project" as it was then. I was there until redundancy beckoned in 2006.
I was never BT, but I do have a pair of 81s inherited from my late Father in Law, who was!
We worked mainly on Radio & Fibre systems, but by then the Krone tool had displaced the other tools for copper work.
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Old 4th Oct 2010, 6:45 pm   #22
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AC/HL View Post
...but by then the Krone tool had displaced the other tools for copper work.'
Krone tool had displaced? Is this pun intentional?
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Old 4th Oct 2010, 9:07 pm   #23
M0AFJ, Tim
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Started with PO Telephones in 1972 London City area, Waterloo Bridge House (now OFCOM towers), worked at Faraday House, left after passing my HNC as couldn't get promoted past T2A,
It was a laugh though, God knows how they made any money in those days!!
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Old 4th Oct 2010, 11:43 pm   #24
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It was a laugh though, God knows how they made any money in those days!!
They did though! ISTR POTEL was always bailing out the Royal Mail, even in those days.

Gone are the days of 2 hour lunch breaks and going to the cinema in the afternoons(!) and staggering back to work for the three o'clock tea break. The boss never used to mind as long as the work got done(which it did).
Certain pubs around the city centre used to be the haunts of different departments.
Lunchtime drinking is now frowned upon, and somehow the days seem much longer!
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Last edited by Tim; 4th Oct 2010 at 11:46 pm. Reason: Confessions of major skyving removed to protect the guilty.
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Old 5th Oct 2010, 7:24 am   #25
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Default Re: Telecomms blokes.

2 hours lunch break? I managed a three hour Lunch break once when MOMI opened (Museum of the Moving Image) and was number 128 in that day. Still got back just in time for afternoon tea.

We had a procedure when the fire alarm drill went (always 2:30pm) in that the first job was to ring the local pubs to get everyone back. Lucky to get a 30 min lunch break these days!
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Old 5th Oct 2010, 12:49 pm   #26
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Default Re: Telecomms blokes.

Hi Dave, I too worked in telecomms all my working life. I started in 1958 at Communication Systems (B'ham) on line plant. I moved to ATE ( Liverpool) working on main exchanges around the B'ham area and covered Director and Telex systems. In 1969 I transfered to PABX's and we were now called Plessey Telecomm. I installed many PABX 3's and 4's including ET4's and automatic call distribution systems, the biggest system was at Barclaycard Northampton with a possible 147 operators. I also installed the first DDI PABX 3 plus satelite at West Brom. council. The crossbar then came along in about 1972 and I installed the Plessey PB 480 systems and the bigger PB1000 ( the biggest system was the AA's at Basingstoke). The stored program control systems came next in 1979 with the Plessey PDX 2000 which was installed under licence from RHOLM USA. The biggest PDX system I installed was at the Austin Rover Longbridge plant and it was a Plessey PDX2400 line system in about 1984. The PDX was then modified and it became the ISDX. We were now called GPT with a tie up with GEC . They had their own PABX called the ISLX. Siemens took us all over in about 1994 and so the show went on. All for now regards Brian.
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Old 16th Oct 2010, 3:31 pm   #27
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Started as a PO TTA in 1973, did internal construction but moved onto Subs Apps & Line for 11 years in North London, ended up in controls and diagnostics and am now involved with Ethernet (fibre) diagnostics.
Have repaired/recovered the 200 & 300 range apps as well as the 700, can even remember repairing plan 7s that used hand-cranked magneto main-extn signalling. My best memory was laying a cable behind Michael Faraday's headstone in Highgate cemetery.
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Old 10th Dec 2010, 11:37 pm   #28
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Evening all. Just training as a Frames Engineer for BT, bit long in the tooth at 43 but still needs must. I found this forum, strangely enough, while researching the legendary type 81 long nose pliers. The story I have is that the pliers were orignally listed as tool number 8T1 in the National Telephone Company list of tools which sounds like 81 and so the name stuck. The current issue of Pliers Wiring Type 2 at BT are not 81 style (hence the research) and are just plain long nose pliers, however Pliers Wiring Type 5 would appear to be the same/similar to 81s. I have some on order and will confirm when they arrive whether the legend is still alive and well. If anyone is slightly interested.
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Old 16th Dec 2010, 10:53 pm   #29
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Although I have worked on U/G telephone cables for the past four years, I started my career in civil aviation and qualified as an air traffic engineer, working on comms and navaids. I then moved on to emergency services radio networks, had a brief spell on water treatment plants and now do cabling/distribution and telephony. So I suppose I am a "radio bloke" really.
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Old 18th Dec 2010, 11:34 am   #30
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Started as an Apprentice in '75 left in '84 to pursue a career in data communications then I.T.

My Granfather worked for GPO in the '20s '30s & '40s. However my dad didn't... He worked for the BBC then worked on radio equipment during the war (Lancasters mostly) then became a radio and televison sevice engineer and went on to teach electronics, so this is where I picked up the bug for Valves and elctronics generally and he taught me. I Can still remember half wave rectiying the mains directly (no transformer) for my one valve sets when I was about 8
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