Short Wave Magazine - Making The Half-Century

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child. I thought as a child: but when I became a man I put away childish things.

Or not as it turns out. Don't worry, I haven't suddenly got religion, even though the 41m Evangelists I hear while shambling about in the early bright would like me to. Pretty clear they are too, as they smite my front-end even unto the third-order intercept point. And it was good.

No, pushing 50 from the good side, I came to the conclusion I'm as adult as I'm going to get and it was time to let our hobby go. Barely stifled cries of joy from the SWM Editor's office. Could this be his swan song?

I'm not sure what happens to you when you pick up a paintbrush. Before you lift that cupboard off the wall to paint behind it, you get an overpowering need to see what stuff you can chuck in an effort to make it lighter. It must be the paint fumes.

There is my copy of the Brimar Valve & Teletube Manual No 6. I bought this new back in the Sixties as Engerland Swung Like A Penderlum Did according to Roger Miller – a smile, a song and a speech defect. The only thing I turned on in that permissive era was a radio. And it was ages warming up, just like me these days. I digress.

Turning the pages, I remember your output valve of choice was a 6BW6, chosen on no greater technical merit than in Class A it offered 8% distortion when you thrashed it, whereas all its chums offered 10%. This was hi-fi, and a concession to miniaturisation as the Ham around the corner says it's a little 6V6, the valve you used for just about everything as the rally season had left you with a garage-full of the things. Looking to your elders and betters, you note that making a 6BW6 happy calls for a 240-ohm cathode bias resistor. As a pedant, you think that working to the nearest Preferred Values of 220 or 270-ohm is an unacceptable compromise and what are Preferred Values anyway?

Well, I like them, ripostes the Elder and Better. Oh, how we laughed. Or, how he laughed. I'd join in to show I was one of the lads.

This copy of Higher Electrical Engineering by Shepherd Morton & Spence can go. It can't go on the jumble sale circuit (electrician's pun. Time to hold your sides again) as there is a hardback edition been appearing in the Community Centres of the three surrounding villages for over two years now. I wonder if the chap who owned it – it would have to be a man as no self respecting woman could get hot and bothered calculating copper losses in 11Kv power distribution – ever used any of the skills it imparted to him. I never got the chance to stall the dinner party conversation before the pudding with my anecdote about dielectric stress on the super-grid. They didn't go for the output valve gag either. The willowy blond I've been chasing for years has never heard of a 6BW6. Oh, what I'd give for a toss of those curls and a purred "I'm a 6V6 girl". Size matters. And I'm at last learning why I don't get invited to dinner-parties anymore.

Mr Shepherd, Mr Morton & Mr Spence, no doubt each to a man a gas at dinner-parties, got me that HND. I never used it. The book came in handy as the crack in the spine reminds of how it held open the shack door during The Summer Of 76. The Mullard Semi-Conductor Manual takes me back to my attempts at going solid-state – the thermal runaway contributing to the heat.

My junk box is in here. Time was when junk boxes were tea chests lined with cigar boxes lovingly labelled with such things as RESISTORS, NON-INDUCTIVE. These would get used in the PA of The Linear To End All Linears. Remember those power cuts in North America a while back? This project would do the same for The National Grid. Did I mention I'm the one to book for after-dinner speeches on insulation losses? Better hurry, I've got a gig in April 2015.

The junk box is now a shoebox and not even full. There are a few non-inductive resistors in here along with a Bulgin 3-pin power plug and a 100Kc/s crystal out of the RA17. Can't throw them away. You just don't know when you are going to need them.

In the end, nothing gets thrown away. You just can't. I've held onto my last three EF80s in some vain thought I can knock up an IF system better that the one in the AR7030.

I thought I'd even sidelined the receiver. Just as I set it up in the farthest corner, out of sight, out of mind, we go to war in our capacity as The 51st State of these United States of America. Every European broadcaster lines up against us. Not reported in the press, you need dear old short wave to hear this. Anyone who used the wireless to do a media scan during the war will know why we got null point at The Eurovision Song Contest.

On the utility side, hearing them going into Baghdad brought it all home. Holiday time in the UK means Search & Rescue Monitoring time. A young girl who was blown out to sea on a set of inflatable teeth was rescued by a man on an inflatable lobster. A coastguard spokesman commented, "This sort of thing is all too common".

And we G8s can stop HF listening and start talking at last! I can't resist a morning trawl across 80m to hear the new voices being put in their places by the old ones. Nothing changes. I remember the local G3s telling this new G8YQL that he wasn't a proper Ham even though the day job was up at Lowes.

But as I say, I'm giving up on childish things if I can get over my fixation with BBC7. The reason I'm holding this paintbrush is to upgrade as the estate agent suggested. He looked about twelve in the suit his mother bought him. He reminded me of the sketches Spike left in the margins of Goon Show scripts. Bluebottle to a tee.

He tells me I'm sitting on a goldmine. That must surely help with soil conductivity and a better earth. So I'm staying put, nothing done, nothing thrown away, listening to the radio. And don't call me Shirley.