Amateur Radio

[Jackrae]

Happy memories when a visit to Lisle Street in Soho during the 60s bought lasting 'pleasure'

 

[JohnW2]

There isn't such a need these days, as there once was. There is so much more you can just buy off the shelf and cheaper.

Sure - but, as discussed, it was the home-brewing (of something which one could then actually use) was the primary attrraction of Amateur Radio for me, and probably most others back then.

1. I was an early builder and writer of software for various systems, long before you could buy a home computer ready made. That was a really fun, entertaining time and right on the edge...

Same here. In the late 70's I not only designed and built a Z80-based computer, but wrote an 'operating system', 'word processor', 'spreadsheet' and various other things for it, directly in Z80 machine code (none of the sissy 'assembler' stuff - and all within the constraint that anything I wrote had to fit in 8 kB of memory! (and I still have that (massive) machine - photos may follow ).

Kind Regards, John

 

[JohnW2]

Happy memories when a visit to Lisle Street in Soho during the 60s bought lasting 'pleasure'

Indeed. Tottenham Court Road and Lisle Street were my 'second home' back then. I got to know Sid Proops quite well - and my first spell (of a few 'spells'!) at uni was (starting in '67) 'just around the corner', so I felt very much 'at home'.

Kind Regards, John

 

[SUNRAY]

A couple of Wireless Set No 46

Nostalgia

12/6d a time. Size of a 1 gallon oil can

my neighbour and I went to lisle street and got 4 for £2... oh we had such plans. Eventually I gutted one to build a 6V6 push-pull amplifier and the other housed 2 sets of 5ft 80W fluo control gear for field day use.

 

[Jackrae]

Where was that, I was at City 66 - 71 on a 'thin sandwich'

Bought a couple of 38 sets still in waxed cartons from a dark cavern in Lisle Street. Had fun dragging them back to the digs in Highbury !!

 

[JohnW2]

Where was that, I was at City 66 - 71 on a 'thin sandwich'

UCL, in Gower Street, parallel to and about 100 yards from Tot. Court Road (67-70, after which I 'moved elsewhere ).

Kind Regards, John

 

[Jackrae]

UCL, in Gower Street, parallel to and about 100 yards from Tot. Court Road (67-70, after which I 'moved elsewhere ).

Kind Regards, John

There used to be a trainee nurses hostel in Bedford Square just next to you - but the least said about that the better )

 

[JohnW2]

There used to be a trainee nurses hostel in Bedford Place just next to you - but the least said about that the better )

In my day, there was a female-only uni Hall of Residence (with Gestapo on the door, dealing with any male visitors!) which, if I recall correctly, was in Bedford Place/Square or thereabouts.

Kind Regards, John

 

[Jackrae]

Yep, the doorstep was as far as I ever managed to get !!

My original halls was in Bunhill Row just up from Moorgate Station. It was a "mixed" hall, in more ways than one. One Saturday night the fire alarms went off and we had to evacuate the building. The head count was around 150% of residency !!!

 

[JohnW2]

Yep, the doorstep was as far as I ever managed to get !! My original halls was in Bunhill Row just up from Moorgate Station. It was a "mixed" hall, in more ways than one. One Saturday night the fire alarms went off and we had to evacuate the building. The head count was around 150% of residency !!!

It's scraping the very distant dusty depths of my memory, but that sounds like a pretty familiar sort of story.

Some of the 'mixed' Halls had a rather strange rule (which I suppose one can just about understand) that, after (I think) 11pm, men were allowed in women's rooms but not vice versa - although I never saw much evidence of that rule being 'policed' (or, at least, effectively policed!)

Kind Regards, John

 

[ericmark]

The Wireless Collage in Colwyn bay closed in 1970, but the result of the collage was a large amount of radio hams in the area, the annual radio rally was in Llandudno, but the cost of the venue increased so did move, last time I heard it was in Abergele, but the result was cheap parts.

The REA was sat at that collage, and also others in North Wales, when I lived in Suffolk it was hard to find a venue to take course and exam, but in North Wales it was easy, the demise of the RAE resulted in less new blood in North Wales, it was harder to find some where to do the exams, the radio clubs did from time to time run the courses, but where as when my son and I did the RAE it was run every year and needed around 10 weeks of night class, today it can take years to get the full licence, I remember a friend a Rumanian ham wanting to get a British licence and it was such a pain going through each stage, he knew the work, to point he could have taught it, and would have been so easy in the days of the RAE.

 

[bernardgreen]

This invokes memories of a nurse's home and the "secret" way in when the door was locked for the night.. Did the Sister know about this "secret" route and turn a blind eye to it ? I think she did. After all it would be better if the nurses were safe in the home than locked out until the morning.

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

Same here. In the late 70's I not only designed and built a Z80-based computer,

I beat you to it with an 8080. I began in the early to mid 70's, with a very early processor on a single board with a crude LED display. I did eventually write a word processor, but it ran out of memory for the text. One idea I developed was that of paging memory to get around the shortage of addressable memory - before the BBC began using it. In the later BBC days, I developed software to capture, decode and display the NOAA weather satellites, as they flew over. I managed 'to sell' the idea to Maplin, but it was too little too late - interests had moved on.

 

[JohnW2]

This invokes memories of a nurse's home and the "secret" way in when the door was locked for the night..

There was a medical school and nurse's home in London which were located at opposite ends of the same building, with corridors spanning the two on all floors. There were doors between the two which were meant to be locked (certainly at night),but I'm not sure that (m)any of them ever were. Even if they had all been locked, there was, as per your example, a (not very!) 'secret' route between the two in the form of an underground 'service tunnel', accessible from both parts of the building!

Did the Sister know about this "secret" route and turn a blind eye to it ? I think she did. After all it would be better if the nurses were safe in the home than locked out until the morning.

Back then, many such places had fairly strictly policed "signing in and out" systems, and any student nurse who appeared to have been 'out all night' could be 'in deep trouble with Matron'! Don't forget that we are talking about (just) the time when anyone under 21 was a 'minor', which meant that the PTB felt responsibility for the welfare of their (usually under-21) student nurses - but I do remember some of the older nurses moaning that, since they were 'adults', such restriction on their activities was ridiculous!

Kind Regards, John

 

[Harry Bloomfield]

The REA was sat at that collage, and also others in North Wales, when I lived in Suffolk it was hard to find a venue to take course and exam, but in North Wales it was easy, the demise of the RAE resulted in less new blood in North Wales, it was harder to find some where to do the exams, the radio clubs did from time to time run the courses, but where as when my son and I did the RAE it was run every year and needed around 10 weeks of night class, today it can take years to get the full licence, I remember a friend a Rumanian ham wanting to get a British licence and it was such a pain going through each stage, he knew the work, to point he could have taught it, and would have been so easy in the days of the RAE.

The lack of courses and lack of exams has was a constant source of complaint for many years. Some twenty plus years ago I tried to address the problem of course by setting up some useful courses on line.