CCF Radio

 

My Introduction to the Radio Hobby

First Beginnings - What is this radio stuff?

It's always hard to know exactly when or why an interest is triggered, but I do remember great excitement in hearing the BBC on my first crystal set. Not a real crystal set with cat's whiskers, just a simple diode. I don't remember why I built it, but I do remember being greatly encouraged by our school science teacher, Michael Whaley. This was at Monkton Combe Junior School in Bath & must have been about 1967 or '68. It triggered an interest in electronics in general, and radio in particular, that was ultimately to determine my profession and career.

The first introduction to amateur radio was a visit with a school friend (Mark Lamport - where are you now?) to G2BAR in Bristol. I remember his highly impressive (to a 12 year old) Heathkit radio set up, listening to his callsign being sent back to him over the air after calling CQ, and knew this was for me. Alas, in those GPO dominated days, the powers that be decreed that no one under the age of 14 could have an amateur radio license. In our enlightened times today, the GPO's successor, the RA, have realised that some one under the age of 14 is far more responsible than anyone over 14 with a microphone and enough power to annoy, and an amateur radio license can be had at the age of 8 or so. But the bug had bitten - I just had to wait. Or did I?

CCF Radio

It is said much of your life is greatly influenced by a few people at key times. If this is the case, then Colonel Bill Currie, CO of King Edward's School Combined Cadet Force, takes a great deal of responsibility in my somewhat erratic course towards gaining a radio license. Incidentally, I hope every one who ever went to KES, or was connected with the school enough to know some of the many characters there in the '60s and '70s, has read his book, Tales Out of School. It's a delightful collection of all those stories he used to tell in English classes. Sadly, I heard he died a few years ago; he will be long remembered, especially by those pupils unlucky enough to become the focus of his infamous temper!

Wednesday afternoons were for the CCF. We traded school uniforms for the drab olive green army cadet clothing, and clumped around around class in the morning and the parade ground in the afternoon. Duties consisted of marching and drills, which I hated, and shooting, the REME and Royal Signals which were far more interesting. The REME was a clique of older kids who I didn't know, and the Royal Signals was a little hut next to the armoury that occasionally disgorged 88 set-clad cadets, burdened down with waxed paper covered batteries, sections of green painted copper aerial tubing and an octopus like assortment of headsets, officer's handsets, PTT cables and webbing. The range of the Wireless Set 88 was considerably less than that of Bill Currie's bellow, as any hapless cadet who became entangled in his own webbing can attest. Inside the signals hut was a delightful assortment of old army radio equipment, but a 19 set, 62 set and an Eddystone 730/4 receiver had pride of place. But, other than 88 sets dragged out for the occasional exercise, the Signals equipment hadn't really been used for a number of years.

WS62. A super radio for its time. It covered 1.6-10MHz with about 1W RF output & was complete with internal ATU that could easily match a fairly short whip, even on the low frequencies. We used it as a back-up on the HF nets, as well as on the REME landrover to communicate back to the Signals hut on 2275kHz from elsewhere in the school grounds. The range was slightly better than an 88 set on a good day!

The callsign of KES CCF was (and still is, as far as I know) Six Eight Bravo and it hadn't been active for a couple of years. Thus, when a small group of us decided to change that, we didn't really have any mentor to tell us how to go about it. We were shown tatty old army radio handbooks and I remember documents that arrived from Blandford Forum from time to time containing information on the HF nets and authentication tables. By now there was a small group of keen enthusiasts. The main perpetrators were myself, David Kolb, Simon Tandy, James Page, Charlie Norton and Nigel Cridland (if any of you ever come across this, get in touch!).

The WS19. I doubt there was a CCF unit in the country that didn't have one. It covered 2-8MHz and, unmodified, produced about 5W of AM from an 807 PA. The infamous dynamotor is the unit to the left. Instantly recognisable on air from its grid modulation scheme which defied any attempt to improve it!

We used the 19 set for the transmitter and the Eddystone receiver. The aerial, I remember, was a long wire Windom which was surprisingly effective, made as it was from black pitch coated steel telegraph wire! The first major problem was powering the 19 set as all its various voltages came from a grinding old dynamotor, itself powered from a 12v battery. As someone had shot the battery with a .22 a year earlier, it wasn't very effective at holding either charge or acid but it was all we had and it worked as long we charged it regularly (about once an hour!). 68B became a regular voice on the net & we were active on a daily basis, usually in the lunch breaks. Almost all the nets were on 5330kHz or 4972.5kHz; there were other frequencies, but they were seldom used other than for the occasional experiment. I remember one time trying to operate two 38 sets on or near 6915kHz but gave it up as a bad job, hearing nothing but European broadcast stations! As far as I recall, we had about 10 frequencies from 2-8MHz. We quickly learnt that a dynamotor powered 19 set is seriously low on RF power and the 807 in the output stage is capable of far more, if given a little encouragement - a 1kV mains powered supply did the job, as well as reducing our dependency on the army issue 12V generator which consumed petrol and oil in similar quantities, converting most of it to noise in the process. Christmas came early the day a newly refurbished C12 arrived in a wooden packing crate, and it became our main transmitter once it too was suitably modified to produce a little more power!

The C12, probably the most common radio on the CCF networks by the mid 70s. It was introduced into the British Army towards the end of the war as a replacement for the 19 Set. The receiver was dreadful, but the transmitter put out an excellent quality AM signal of around 10W. The blue and red controls duplicated the VFO and output tuning so the set could be switched quickly between two different frequencies.

The CCF nets taught us the practical skills of HF operating. We learnt how to keep the radios running, experimented with aerials and spent a lot of time simply listening - broadcast, amateur, marine, pirate, the lot. We learnt the 'sound' of the various frequencies. None of the HF radios had a tuning dial that could be set to an accuracy of much better than 50-100kHz. Instead, we had this wonderful device which lived in a beautiful mahogany box called a wavemeter. Much of the official bumpf we received from Blandford Forum warned of never transmitting without first accurately netting the transmitter with the use of the wavemeter. I don't think any of us really knew how to use it! We adjusted the 19 set to around 5.5MHz for Shannon Aeradio (still AM in the 1970's) & then tuned it down until we 'heard' 5330kHz. I don't think we were ever out by more than a few kHz.

The practice of sending QSL cards carried over presumably from amateur radio, as did the printing, hence the rather surprising reference to the RSGB! The professionally modified callsign here dates the card from just after many of the calls were changed (our old call was 60A), sometime in the early 70s, I believe.

The only other CCF QSL card I could find that has survived the years. This is from 63A in Bristol and is blank, so quite how it arrived in my collection is lost in the passage of time!

Diversions

Not all of our 'self-training' involved radios. We had numerous quantities of green painted copper aerial tubing in various shapes and sizes, and the day a bag of sodium chlorate (a common weed killer at the time) mysteriously appeared in the Signals hut, we duly put these pieces of copper tube into service to further enhance our knowledge and education in pyrotechnics.

The first bomb we made was a fairly simple affair. I wince now as I recall how we packed the sodium chlorate and sugar into the tube and hammered the ends flat to seal it. We set it off after school hours just outside the .22 rifle range. It made a very satisfactory bang and embedded pieces of copper shrapnel into the wooden door of the range. Fuelled by success, our subsequent effort was much grander and we were at least sensible enough to realise that some form of containment was required if we weren't to cause serious damage. The rifle range was built parallel to rising ground, so the end of the range, and the brick wall on one side, were below ground level with about a 2 foot gap before a bank of solid earth. Our experiment was thus contained on all sides except up and back! We used the largest, thickest sections of aerial tube available and spared no effort into packing in the maximum quantity of our carefully refined concoction. A willing volunteer signaler lit the outer fuse and, half running, half scrambling down the side of the 25 yard range, made his way back out of the gap to the relative safety of the Signals hut doorway where the rest of us were all perched in anticipation. It was, as I recall, a mild, calm summer evening. KES sits on the northern facing slope of one of the many hills surrounding Bath. It offers a splendid view, both visually and acoustically, of the entire city. Our bomb finally went off like a direct overhead thunderclap, the explosion creating multiple echoes back and forth across the hills surrounding the city. It took many seconds before the reverberations gradually died away, and far longer for our ears to recover! Our immediate thought was 'oh shit, there's no way we'll get away with this'; we expected sirens to be heard almost immediately, and the school car park to be filled shortly thereafter by police and fire engines. They never came, but we scared ourselves enough to look for somewhere where the sound could also be contained!

We decided to detonate the last bomb inside the rifle range (we didn't know then it would be the last!). The range met most of our criteria quite well: a cement floor with a thick sand and dust covering, brick walls on all 4 sides and a large sand barrier at the target end specifically designed to stop any projectiles. Only the bitumen covered thin ply roof, with a few holes about 0.22 of an inch in diameter, seemed vulnerable. In the event, containing an explosion proved completely unnecessary, as a weak point in the tubing resulted in a noise no louder that pop. What we had instead was a fire. Sodium chlorate burns with a bright yellow flame and produces copious quantities of thick, acrid white smoke.

This was also our first experiment during school hours, lunchtime in fact. As responsible sixth formers, we were allowed down on to the parade ground whereas for the rest of the school it was out of bounds. That afternoon, a shooting competition had been arranged, with a neighbouring CCF unit visiting to challenge KES CCF. Sometime shortly after midday, and less than 3 hours before the aforementioned match was due to begin, visibility in the KES 25 yard range was exactly zero. The fire, fortunately, had burnt itself out harmlessly in the sand at the end of the range, but the smoke remained and, with no ventilation other than the range door, looked likely to do so for quite a while. Ever resourceful, we looked for ways to clear the air. A four stroke engine from the REME section provided a possible answer. It didn't do anything except run; I think it was for training purposes only. But it was completely self contained and mounted on a portable frame; more importantly, the flywheel included a large fan, presumably intended to cool said engine. Placed in the range door and started up, it began to clear the air, albeit ever so slowly. We were starting to breath slightly more easily when, to our absolute horror, the diminutive but imposing figure of Col. Bill Currie was spotted heading down towards the parade ground. Like school boys caught red-handed, we froze. Bill looked at the engine running in rifle range doorway, and the swirling mass of smoke, sand and dust beyond. "WHO THE HELL STARTED THAT BLOODY ENGINE?" he roared. Silence. "YOU - WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" "Nothing, Sir."

"Nothing, Sir" is thought of by most teachers as an example of an extremely stupid response by an idiot child caught in the act. On the contrary, "nothing, Sir" is an excellent response. Teachers expect school boys to be stupid. Anything you can do or say to confirm this fact in times of trouble enhances their self esteem, makes them feel important, and therefore goes along way towards mitigating any impending punishment.

Though trapped and dazed, a flicker of hope appeared and a way out of our current predicament. From his first statement, it slowly dawned on us that Bill actually believed the engine was responsible for the visibility in the range, or lack thereof. Being punished for stupidity by starting an engine in a doorway was a heaven sent easy way out! Had he ever discovered the awful truth, I'm sure the life and career of a number of former KES signalers would have taken a very different route!

The fire in the rifle range was the end of our sodium chlorate experiments, but not the final episode. That occurred about 6 months later, during lunch break on a particularly wet winter day. On such days the grass areas of the school were out of bounds and the parade ground was open instead. It was also one of the main areas used by the smokers as there was only one path down and a lookout could be easily kept. A group of us was, as usual, in the Signals hut. One of the smokers came into the hut, cigarette in mouth, and 'asked' if he could stay. He was one of the first eleven as well as a member of a certain gang that you didn't argue with. Reluctantly we agreed, and so he stayed, at least until the look out called "KV!" "Eh?" "Watson's coming, pronto - put the f**ker out!" He didn't put the cigarette out, he just dropped it.

At this point, I should explain were the sodium chlorate lived. It was kept in a piece of old sacking, far from waterproof, and stored on the floor under one of the racks of radio equipment. During the course of the year, it had been dragged in and out of its hiding place on numerous occasions with the result that the wooden floor and surrounding area had become caked in a white crystalline covering. The only form of heating in the signals hut was an ancient electric heater with a traditional woven cloth insulated flex. It too had absorbed a good measure of the sodium chlorate mix. When the cigarette reached the floor, it landed on the mains cable of the heater which, after a few seconds, spluttered into life. The all too familiar orange flame and white smoke reappeared. One chap, I think it was David, reacted with commendable speed and chucked the heater with its blazing comet tail straight out through the open door, thus undoubtedly preventing the rapid demise of the signals hut and contents. A split second later Brian Watson came in. "WHAT THE HELL'S GOING ON HERE?" "Nothing, Sir." Brian was always a very good natured chap and, being a member of the English department, not Chemistry, presumably did not understand the significance of a mains cable that burnt with a bright orange flame and thick white smoke. I'm sure he thought very little of the British Army electric heater No. 1, for the use of!

I returned to KES some 5 years later when I happened to be back in Bath, and took a nostalgic walk down to the parade ground, the CCF area with the Signals hut, Armoury and rifle range. It was very quiet; our 5MHz Windom aerial had gone, with no obvious replacement, indeed no visible aerials of any description. The door of the rifle range had been repainted, but as I surreptitiously scratched at an irregular point on the surface with my thumbnail, I spotted a small glint of copper in the Autumn sun. I walked out of KES for the final time, and on to the first rung of the corporate ladder that was to occupy the next 23 years of my life, my spirits visibly lifted!

Licensed, finally!

I could legally transmit on the CCF HF network from school, but to operate on the amateur bands, I still needed to obtain a license. This required passing the RAE (radio amateur's examination) and taking a morse code test, two hurdles that the CCF had very effectively distracted me from for several years. The first radio I had of my own was an old 38 set which I bought from the school when they were replaced by the 88 set. I think I paid £1 for it! It only covered 6-9MHz, AM only, so I was limited to the 49m & 41m broadcast bands and the 40m amateur band & some stuff in between. Naturally, having a transmitter as well, the temptation to try it was far too high, but my efforts were fruitless - I don't think anyone ever heard me and I'm sure I never would have heard any reply if they had. The 38 set, fortunately, only put out about 1/4 of a watt into a short whip and it wasn't until it was later joined by a 19 set that people did start to hear me, but that's another story! I finally convinced my parents to buy me a communications receiver, a Lafayette HA-600A, which I used for many years, first as an SWL, and then as my main receiver with various home-brewed transmitters.

Around this time, I met and befriended Bob Hannaford, G3VIV, who was the perfect instructor and the first real mentor I had. He gave me tremendous encouragement and help to learn morse; he seldom operated any other mode. He also decided we should build a valve AM & CW transmitter together from his junk box which would be mine once I had my callsign. No further motivation was required! Most Thursday evenings we would spend an hour or so planning and building the transmitter followed by a check to see what 14MHz CW had to offer.

I took and passed the RAE in 1976 and I suppose I could have applied for a class B license which allowed operation on the VHF bands and above and did not require morse, but all my interest was in HF and at that time I had no knowledge of, or attraction for, the world above. So, a few months later, I took the trip down to the now defunct Portishead Radio at Highbridge in Somerset for the 12wpm morse test. I received the callsign G4FSU just after the New Year in January 1977. Fittingly, the first entry in my new log book was with G3VIV on 21MHz CW with the crystal controlled transmitter we had built together, a grand distance of 4.5 miles!