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Written by GEOFF
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Saturday, 15 January 2005 |
We had a very large oak cabinet in my parents dining room, and we were
not encouraged to change any of the settings of the ’wireless set’
which was usually switched on for the evening news and for special
programs on Saturday night like ‘In Town Tonight’ which some of you may
remember, eventually we were allowed to tune the ‘wireless’ and listen
to other stations, our father managed a Radio and TV shop in Seven
Kings just outside of Central London, and the books in his library
introduced me to some early experimenting, all of the circuits used
tubes (valves) since Bell & Shokleys Transistor was still being
developed.
Eventually a new control on the wireless became apparent, a wave band switch, and at Seven I had just sufficient grip to rotate, the lights moved to illuminate a new band, Short Wave, which started at 200 metres and went down to the 19 metre band.
The family wireless was quite elaborate for its time (1951) and had no external antenna, so going through dads library came across F.J.Camms Wireless Encyclopedia and this was the first building block. Stations on Short wave were best listened to at night when the background noise and electrical interference was minimal, the BBC had powerful transmitting stations all over England and often had programs specifically for short wave listeners, within the next four years, my listening was becoming specialized, and radio magazines Practical Wireless, Wireless World and old Short Wave Magazines, actually gave the address and call signs of local Amateur Radio Stations.
The first licensed UK Amateur radio stations had only a number prefix followed by two digits, the first license issued was 2AA, and the first UK call book was published in 1913 by A.W. Gamages, in London, gradually as the communication technology developed, ‘Hams’ were able to contact stations in Europe and it became necessary to add a prefix denoting the country, The British Post Office, Postmaster General reissued Amateur call signs with a G prefix, many of my Short wave Logs had reports of G2 stations, although today not many of them are still with us, we refer to them as ‘silent keys’
Most new technology is the results of innovations and new ways of obtaining a better performance than the first early wireless receivers, one of Guglielmo Marconi’s mentors was (Sir) Oliver Lodge, who developed the de-coherer which allowed Marconi to compete with the International Cable companies before the Thermionic valve was invented, Marconi took Oliver Lodges idea and then developed the mangetic amplifier or ‘maggy’ granted the famous British Patent #7777 and used this to pursue the 10c/word international cable market with his first transatlantic signal from Cornwall to St. Johns Newfoundland. Maggys went to sea and were on the RMS Titanic and RMS Carpetheia, if we look at the equipment on the Titanic we can see huge induction coils and very high voltages to Generate the ‘spark’ which was listened to on the ‘maggy’ receivers, unfortunately for the RMS Titanic the maggy receiver required the operator to wind up the clockwork mechanism, and the closest vessel did not hear Titanic’s CQ (Code for SOS) as the Wireless Operator was asleep. The Clockwork mechanism continually pulled an iron-wire through a set of coils wound on a small glass tube, producing the first amplifier, these materials were all currently available, and it was Marconi that brought these materials together, Dega Marconi in her book ‘My father Marconi’ talked about the two years he spent in virtual confinement until the maggy was developed. Other such inventions have also been attributed to hams, but we must go back a step.
All of Marconi’s experiments so far were using a code invented by Samuel Morse, using dots and dashes to send different characters making up words and numbers which was developed primarily for the Telegraph and International Cable companies
The Marconi Company received its first breakthrough in 1902 when Lloyds of London announced that they required a system that could indicate the arrival of ships coming into port before the vessel could be seen or heard, semaphore was currently in use by Aldis lamp or flags, but with poor visibility, the vessel was at risk.
We then saw John Ambrose Flemming’s development of the thermionic diode and the Edison effect first reported by Edison with his electric light bulb with a third lead but not fully understood, Lee DeForest then went onto develop the Thermionic Triode which changed the World of communications overnight. With these two devices Lee Dee Forest was able to produce a modulator, which could transmit the human voice, and a demodulator for detecting the received signal and converting it back into speech. Although Lee De Forest achieved this in 1906 it was not until 1920 did we see the first commercial Radio Broadcast by Dame Nellie Melba from Chelmsford England.
The BBC was in fact originally an experimental wireless Station call sign 2LO and benefited from all the research and development that Early wireless pioneers contributed From their hobby in the early 1900’s If we look at the Gamages UK Call Book of 1913 very few stations were able to operate below 100 metres but were still able to achieve considerable distance contacts what is referred to as DX, in fact we have a whole code of our own which we call the Q-code developed by the military for shortening telegraphy messages.
The First World War brought an end to Radio Amateur operations in England with a telegram sent to each licensed operator from the Postmaster General withdrawing all transmitting licenses and the compulsory dismantling of stations. Most radio operators were conscripted into wireless schools or immediately became assigned to the armed forces.
Communications equipment had now became a very important industry, and we saw some rapid developments in Tube technology and smaller equipment for the army and navy, smaller tubes that could carry communications to the frontline. After the first world war, government surplus equipment was available, and radio Hams soon made use of this new resource of equipment and components Most of the equipment had been operating on military frequencies, so with some considerable ingenuity, hams purchased and modified what ever they could obtain. The first UK ham to contact the United States was G2KF Jack Partridge contacting W1MO operated by K.B.Warner at the American Radio Relay League in Hartford Conn. It is interesting to note that both stations were using simple two valve receivers and preferred them to superhetrodyne receivers. This transatlantic contact was made in August 1924 about 23 years after Marconi’s letter ’s’ was received in St John’s Newfoundland.
Now when my early short wave listening started to get interesting was when I managed to obtain a tube and build my own regenerative receiver, I was now 13 and my mother had allowed me to join a radio club in Ilford Essex, which was quite close to where my dad had his radio & TV shop, the radio club was fascinating and I got to meet some of the operators heard on the Amateur bands.
It wasn’t many months later that the first Russian Satellite ‘Sputnik’ was put into earth orbit on October 4th 1957, ten years after the transistor was invented, but it was one of our Radio club members a Teacher from the local Technical college who had taken a World War II Communications receiver and tuned it into the 10metre band and issued a statement to the BBC that from the radio beacon from the 10lbs satellite it could be determined from its orbital speed where it was launched from and the type of deployment vehicle.
Within five years, I had been offered a technology apprenticeship and was well on my way into my aerospace career. Radio had to take a back seat until completing my education.
It was not until emigrating to Canada in 1973, did my interest return for radio, but within 3 months of seeing a Ham display at the local shopping mall in Montreal I wanted to get my own radio license, morse code was the hard part, you had to pass the DOC code exam at 12WPM for three minutes together with the radio exam entitled you to operate on CW for 12 months and then you could apply for the Advanced to be able to operate in voice mode. My first call sign was VE2EGU, Echo- Golf- Uniform and one of the first goals was to contact my UK radio friends across the Atlantic, my first year as an operator was all on CW, and soon became a ‘good fist’
Global Communications My professional career was in Gas Turbine engine controls and while working for Pratt & Whitney heard a station in the Province of Mali (North Africa) ask if there was any Station on frequency who had knowledge of a Radial 1835 engine, The radio protocol dictated that you initially gave your call sign so……. VE3/TZ6 this is VE2EGU Montreal, understand you require help with your R1835 How may we assist you, QSL (did you understand my message) de VE2EGU
The operator explained their situation, they had a Douglas DC3 down in the desert in Mali (TZ6) and the gearbox was filled with sand from a sudden storm, they were 400 miles from Timbuktu (this is for real) and required assistance from the engine manufacturer.
Advised operator that my employer was Pratt & Whitney aircraft and we would look into a possible air drop of spare engine, they told me to sked (time and frequency) and come back on the radio same time tomorrow.
Spoke to my boss at P&W and they came up with an air drop originating in Europe which would deploy a Radial R1835 at their location, please obtain coordinates of VE3/TZ6…Returning to my home that afternoon I found VE3/TZ6 still busy making lots of DX contacts, when he called for other DX stations, I called again VE3/TZ6 this is (de) – VE2EGU with traffic…………..
VE2EGU go ahead …. de VE3/TZ6 the request for their coordinates appeared to be a real show-stopper, and they said not to bother they would strip down and rebuild the R1835 engine with a tent cover…. thank you…….
Some months later I received a letter and card from the Canadian geological expedition that was looking for Uranium in the Mali desert, and they did not want to divulge their location, since there was also another competitor expedition in the same area.
Field Day June 24th - 26th - 2004
So this weekend June 24th - 26th 2004 Radio Amateurs (hams) from all over North America will be operating their ARRL field day, and we will try and contact as many other stations also operating in the ‘field’ [which is an emergency preparedness exercise] we take our radio equipment and our antennas and generators, we have to provide everything we would need to handle messages for 24hours.
We are awarded single points for voice and double points for CW contacts, that’s morse code with all the dits and dah’s, and depending on the number of stations we are operating at our location and how many watts we are running gives us our classification, so if we are operating 4 stations and under 100watts we could be 4C British Columbia, we will probably have twenty operators supplying 24 hour support to four stations
So at 11:00am Saturday 26th June we will we trying to contact all the thousand’s of other Radio Clubs who will be operating Field Day representing our community in International Amateur Radio.
Come and visit our field day operations off 256th street (1 km North of Dewdney Trunk) look for the signs.
VE2EGU, VE7HGH, N6GHY, G4HEW Geoff Hancock June 22, 2004|
Written by Guest on 2005-01-23 00:44:43
Great article Geoff. This has given me inspiration to visit the "Marconi Room" at the radio museum for another look. I think they are still open on Sundays. I'll buy the coffee if you you explain how it all works. |
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