No 42 had originally been a gas lamp house, built around the 1890's, and all the electrics were of the add on variety. Bakelite switches and lamp holders, two and three pin round plugs and sockets and all the wiring was rubber cloth clad stuff. All pulsing away at 240+ volts and several amps (always remember its the amps that will kill you before the volts get a hold!). Okay in its early kitten days but pretty lethal once grown up and its teeth had developed, gnawing into all that decrepit insulation.. Fuse blowing, rendering the whole house into darkness, was a pretty regular occurrence at No 42 without having the 12 yr old nerdy geek boffin kid conducting evil and dastardly experiments in the bedroom (and as I led a sheltered life such experiments did not develop once I discovered girls some years later...sadly!!).
A significant development in my early radio education came when Dad left Antiference and got a job as a TV and radio salesman at Broadmeads, a TV and Radio shop, on the Alum Rock Road. Dad tended to drift from job to job in his later years but throughout my childhood, no doubt pinned down by his responsibilities, especially once my sister arrived in 1963, he had steady employment and all in the TV/radio trade. For me this meant Saturdays in the back of the shop making tea for the staff, sweeping up and polishing tv and radio cases ready for display. It also meant that I could don a brown labcoat and sit for hour and hours with Ray, the engineer, in the back workshop learning the repair business. This was usually to the background sounds of Eddy Wareing and the rugby or the crash and bangs of the wrestling (which we all thought at the time was 'real' rather than stage fighting!) and the eagerly awaited football results. It was around this time that Dad had a spare time job collecting for Littlewoods football pools on Friday nights which in turn became my first ever 'job' when I took the mantle from Dad to earn my first pocket money.
One memory that sticks with me was being sent out during the winter of 1963 in a howling blizzard to do the round.... Not doing the pools during those times wasn't an option so the collector had to go and do the job whatever the weather. I was too young to do the work officially so it was dad who took all the takings down to the office on Washwood Heath Road before the 10.30pm deadline and collect his commission of which I got my cut...Thinking back I reckon Dad was on to a good thing....
One memory that sticks with me was being sent out during the winter of 1963 in a howling blizzard to do the round.... Not doing the pools during those times wasn't an option so the collector had to go and do the job whatever the weather. I was too young to do the work officially so it was dad who took all the takings down to the office on Washwood Heath Road before the 10.30pm deadline and collect his commission of which I got my cut...Thinking back I reckon Dad was on to a good thing....
Ray Beels was quite an influence on me during those years and even more of an influence on Dad's sister, Val, who he married hence becoming part of the family. I only have one indistinct picture of Ray taken from the programme of a Birmingham City FC match from 19th December 1970 long after both he and Dad had left the TV trade. This allowed Saturday afternoons for our continuing love affair with football. The picture is posted here today and commemorates that wonderful time at The Blues when Trevor was King.... Oh the nostalgia! You won't be able to really make out the picture but when actually viewed at close quarters you can distinctly make out Dad's high forehead, Ray's white cloth cap and me wearing the very popular teenage rage at the time of a fur clad hooded parka. We always stood at the Tilton Road end and always in the same spot. Everyone else had their regular standing places too so each Saturday's home game meant a reunion of sporting pals, people we only ever met on the terraces. It was at St Andrew's that I first learnt that Dad used the 'F' word and various other expletives and it was also a place where I too was given permission to blaspheme, rant and rage and swear as much as I liked... but only there. We did have standards in those days!
Ray was a great bloke who also played guitar in a local band who had a residency at Canon Hill Park pavilion on Saturday nights. I can see why Val fell for him as he fitted into the swinging 60's image with all its optimism and excitement. Ray was able to teach me various fixes on a variety of radio gear and even let me loose with a soldering iron on the simple fixes whilst he helped Dad out front in the shop. Perhaps the biggest boon of this arrangement was the amount of surplus stuff I was allowed to bring home, all of it consigned to the dustbin but saved by me from such a fate.. Or rather ultimately just having a stay of execution whilst I had a play with it.
Ray was a great bloke who also played guitar in a local band who had a residency at Canon Hill Park pavilion on Saturday nights. I can see why Val fell for him as he fitted into the swinging 60's image with all its optimism and excitement. Ray was able to teach me various fixes on a variety of radio gear and even let me loose with a soldering iron on the simple fixes whilst he helped Dad out front in the shop. Perhaps the biggest boon of this arrangement was the amount of surplus stuff I was allowed to bring home, all of it consigned to the dustbin but saved by me from such a fate.. Or rather ultimately just having a stay of execution whilst I had a play with it.
My first real bang of an electric shock was from a PYE reel to reel tape recorder which I was trying to fix at home one evening when, of course, Mum and Dad were out. It must have been significant as I remember it clearly! I know that electricity moves very very fast but I still swear that when you are about to get a belt you 'know' its going to happen in that split second before it strikes. This was no exception and I can still close my eyes and relive the magnetic pull that I felt as my thumb kind of stuck to the transformer as the volts kicked in up my arm. Luckily I was able to pull myself away and so lived to tell this tale. Ever since I have had a very healthy respect for mains electricity and hopefully I'll manage to stay clear of harms way until I hang up my soldering iron for the last time. Its quite peculiar to note, coming up to the present time for a brief moment, that since I have started earning my living from the repair and restoration of old valve radios, my current industrial injuries seem to be confined to cutting holes in my hands when using the saw and narrowly escaping blindness at such times when the grinding wheel on the Dremel breaks and flies off into my face... Hmmm, maybe I need to look at my current practice? No shocks for a few years though, so maybe I'm okay on that score, or just on borrowed time?
In an attempt to back up my practical experiences with Ray and with Granddad Thomas on my Irish holidays, I started to buy Practical Wireless, then issued every week. This turned out to be a significant drain on my pocket money but I considered it worth it. The trouble was, and remember my limited but rapidly improving reading abilities, I had a great deal of trouble understanding the damn thing! It was largely gobbledygook to me but with enough snippets of sense to keep me interested. Luckily Ray could point me in the right direction and also furnished the necessary bits and bobs needed to turn some of their blueprints into working examples of radio, sort of!
Even today I find some aspects of the magazine and Radcom, the Radio Society of Great Britain's tome, totally baffling. Things usually begin to make sense as the practical side of things begin to catch up with the theory. Its interesting to note that I often read past issues of both magazines again and this time can understand them. It's like fog clearing.. It must be the way my mind works!
To digress slightly, I reckon that within the world of amateur radio there is a kind of mystical aura surrounding the hobby which does tend to attract some very weird people.... I suppose I have to include myself! If you have ever been to an amateur radio rally or club you will certainly find some amazing characters. My present radio club is no exception but I will spare their blushes by not naming names... I do know that several of us also readily acknowledge the presence of the weirdos and enjoy having a bit of a rant form time to time on how it is that such people seem to be attracted to the hobby, usually as we man the Bring and Buy stall at our annual rally.... But as I said I'm included so also part of the picture too, so glass houses and stones springs to mind!
In all seriousness there does seem to be a few distinct types of character to be found. At our local rally (a 'rally' is a kind of radio related junky jumble sale that we and several other clubs around the country organise, usually to raise club funds) some of the sights to be seen are a joy to behold: The guy who has long silver hair right down his back, wears shorts in all weathers, even one year in the snow, and is always accompanied by a small Jack Russell. Then there is the smelly guy from Oldham who reeks of urine and usually has several snotty children and a pushchair in tow. We also have 'Wiggy' the chap from Bury who for years sported a horrendous and obvious black wig to allegedly hide his bald spot. From Stockport we have Sherlock, the fellow who is so short sighted he uses a large magnifying glass to view any object on sale which he peruses in great detail. He often has trouble finding the way out of the hall. There's the geeky types who are usually festooned with antennas sticking out of bags and pockets and have covert type earpieces sticking out and tangling with their copious ear hair. There's the Raynet (Amateur Radio Emergency Network) brood who like to wear all kinds of paramilitary uniform with the ubiquitous baseball cap trying to look important. Finally, and the piece de resistance, is the transvestite... A big chap who is so obviously a man but has the courage to walk around strutting his stuff usually in fish nets and high heels.... You have to admire his guile!
All of them have their part to play and although I can joke about them I would never deny them the right to be a part of our hobby. The only people I would hound out of the hobby are the ex-CB'ers , often new M3 or M6 callsign holders, who haven't been taught correct operating procedures and who fall into 'CB speak' when on the air... Anyone asking another station what their 'personal' is when they mean 'What's you name?' should be shot, strangled at birth, have their googlies torn off with a rusty knife, be stripped naked and beaten with a kipper.... and.. and... and......
Generally I find that many officianardos of the hobby can be said to fall into some form of special needs? Its a male thing too as the percentage of females in the hobby is pitifully low (they probably have more sensible things to do). Most of us start off in the hobby with greater or lesser degrees of knowledge about the finer points of electronic and radio station operating skill and techniques. That's how it should be. Most of us progress to become efficient and confident in making the most out of our hobby and keep and uphold the required standards. In due course we leave the area of special need I'm alluding to above...At least to some extent! Unfortunately some also remain in the weirdo category either overtly or covertly depending on the degree of knowledge and skill absorbed... I suppose I'm saying that some of us never develop or have the brain power to develop beyond the magically mystical stage we discover at the beginning of our journey into the hobby. The hangers on, left behind by the rest of us, still turn up at rallies all over the country because they want to belong to a hobby that purports to be technical and hence reflects, by association, that they must be brainy and bright enough to understand it... Hence we have a fraternity, the 'Bluffers', at one end of the hobby who might know some of the words but can't remember the tune!
I hope I haven't offended anyone with these sentiments but as I said earlier...People in glass houses can't throw stones or have black pots or kettles!!! Maybe we are all Bluffers to greater or lesser extent? Its how good you are at covering things up that separates the men from the boys!
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