Well finally the wonderful summer 'silly season' of holidays is regretfully over and the past month has gone by so fast! .... Hence the time lag in this blog which as of now is resumed or exhumed depending on its entertainment value!
We've been away first to France to relax a little but at the same time help our friends in their valiant work in the restoration of an old French barn.... I was acting as labourer lifting and helping fix up plasterboard and thus the joints have needed a couple of weeks to recover... Then we travelled down to Devon to spend some time with a wonderful lady who was the midwife who helped deliver our Jon (we had a home birth!) and who we have kept in touch with over the past thirty nearly years... She was able to meet up with Jon as he was appearing as Captain Hook in a London Touring Theatre production of Peter Pan this summer making hundreds of small children cry throughout the south of England...
Now its back to The Workshop and once again I'm trying hard to catch up on Orders for radio restorations and DAB conversions, and loving every minute! I'm so lucky to be able to enjoy my work but I don't want to sound too smug as sometimes even this occupation can be stressful especially when that final 'tweak' of a circuit can result in the smoke escaping from the electronics and rendering the air in The Workshop thick with expletives....
And so to the teenage years.... Well, as already told, much of my time was spent in the TV shop back room with Ray Beels each Saturday afternoon but it was around this time that I also discovered a love of all things aircraft. Much of this came from my dad who at first dragged me along to my first air display on an old Midland Red bus to Tern Hill aerodrome in Shropshire and later to Gaydon, Cosford and Benson. Mostly this was around Battle of Britain celebrations each September with dad taking the time off from work so we could go and soak up the smells, noise and pure joy of watching the aerial spectacle. I remember The Black Arrows and their Hawker Hunter jets and then the Red Arrows ( Yellowjacks?) and the Folland Gnat. Gaydon displays were especially memorable due to the large contingent of V Bombers, Valiants, Victors and Vulcans. Tern Hill was memorable as the place where I was first stung by a wasp and I am and will always be thankful for the input of the RAF Medical Orderly who cured the pain with a packet of Murray Mints! This memory was revived in my speech at my daughter's wedding when welcoming Ian into our family... Ian is now a Squadron Leader in the RAF and has brought the world of aircraft even closer... But more of him later!
With the aircraft spotting came airband radio. During the long school holidays I would take myself off to Birmingham Airport at Elmdon armed with spotting book, banana sandwiches and a flask full of cocoa (still a combination which to this day which I often resort to as 'comfort food' in times of stress!). The airport was only five miles from Hartopp Road and we were privy to being very near to the final approach when aircraft were landing on runway 33 so I also had a good view from my back bedroom window. Its almost unbelievable now, in these days of our reliance on the car for transport but I used to walk to the airport! This saved my pocket money so I could indulge in my other pastime of building Airfix models of all the planes and more that I was spotting. On wet days I might only walk as far as the Coventry Road and then get the 58 bus to the terminus and walk up the the airport from the back route.
Sometimes at weekends we would all go, mum and dad and my baby sister, and have a day out at the airport and a picnic in the public viewing area. Birmingham wasn't anywhere near as busy as it is now with maybe three or four flights a day being a bit of a pile up!! The aircraft of my youth were BEA Dakotas, Viscounts, Vanguards and British Eagle Britannias, KLM DC4's and Aer Lingus Dakotas and Viscounts. Note that there were no jets at first as the runway at Elmdon was too short until extended in the late 1960's... This then opened up a world of BAC 111's and more. I actually got up early one Saturday morning and went to the airport to be there at 8am to witness the first landing of a BOAC Boeing 707 and again at another time to see the first Convair Coronardo. Despite these beauties some of my more favoured aircraft included the twin boomed Noratlas transporters of the then West German and Belgian Airforce and the RAF Argosy's and Short's Belfast. What these miltary transports did at Elmdon I never knew but I bet it was pretty innocent stuff. My absolute favourite has to be the Viscount and the sound of those Dart turboprops... I still get the hairs rise on the back of my neck when the screaming pitch of these wonderful sounding power units seem to drop slightly at the point of taxi... Great stuff and I often look up YouTube and turn the sound up full blast to wallow in a bit of audio nostalgia!
On one Sunday mum and dad treated me to a short 15 minute pleasure flight on an old Dragon Rapide over to Brum city centre and back. I remember it cost a fiver, a lot in those days, and I expect dad would have loved to have gone himself rather than me! As I was rather a serious child and not as emotionally demonstrative as I am now, I can remember discussions in the car going home about me 'not looking as though I enjoyed it'... Well, it might be 45 years or so later but YES!, I did! Happy Days!!
But back to radio... I soon discovered that other more 'professional' plane spotters were able to listen into the air traffic control communications on small VHF radios and, of course, I had to have one! Father Christmas duly obliged and the world of ATC opened up. I began to learn how to improve the signal via rudimentary amplifiers and antennas so that I could not only listen to Birmingham Control Tower whilst at the airport but at home too. This wasn't too much of a challenge looking back now to those years with my present radio knowledge but way back then this was all new to me and the innocence of the pioneer spirit was strong. I also developed the short wave side of listening on AM with an even longer long wire aerial down the garden to grab the short waves and listen to the VOLMET broadcasts from Shannon and London. I also have to admit that other frequencies attracted my attention too such as the fire, ambulance and police!! But of course, I didn't listen to those!!
A school trip down to Elmscott in Devon in the summer of 1969 opened up two more areas of experience. The visit was a biology field trip to make transects of the beach to catalogue all the flora and fauna of rock pools and stuff... The real learning experience was teaming up with the sixth form lads and getting hammered on Newcastle Brown Ale. Probably only one, maybe two? This was the first new area of experience of which I still embibe today. The second area was the Coastguard Station at Hartland Point. This truly blew my mind and opened up a whole new world of maritime radio. I was totally impressed by the antenna arrays and all the HF gear... mainly Eddystone radios I recall... and the constant traffic of ship to ship and ship to shore communication. The whole of the western approaches were covered and they had direct links to the eastern seaboard of the USA and Canada, and there was all the rescue coordination stuff plus the RNLI aspects of their work. Thank you Mr Whetnall (our then teacher and now sitting on his cloud up top somewhere) for organising the trip and tour we had of the station.
I resolved to make sure that once home I would get to grips with this maritime communications lark and get hold of a really decent Short Wave receiver. I didn't realise it then but living in the middle of England was going to be a bit of a handicap in trying to listen to ships at sea........
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