[Radio Wrangler]

We have to remember all history. Who's to say that one bit is more important than any other?

In the fifties, Britain was austere, really austere. In the sixties, disposable income was still very very low compared to what we have today. WWII had taught an awful lot of people about radio stuff, and at the end, dumped them back into civvy street. What did they do? They were used to intense demands and challenging work. Going back to being a milkman or painter and decorator or bank clerk must have seemed an anticlimax. Some went into the new TV trade and recycled their radar knowledge. Plenty didn't. But a lot took up amateur radio. The exam and the morse test were a breeze for those in radio op or signalling posts in the war, or national service for several years afterwards. Numbers of radio amateurs and dhortwave listeners surged, and there was a glorious sunspot cycle to welcome them.

So they needed equipment.

In a war, the losing side throws everything and every one they've got into the last ditch effort. Their factories are flattened and they wind up with little equipment left.

The winning side still has their industrial machine going, lots of work in progress, far more tanks and aircraft than needed in peacetime, and amazing amounts of spares and stock.

So there was a war-surplus bonanza. It provided radios and components through the fifties and well into the sixties.

Transmitters are relatively easy to build. A good receiver is a much more serious undertaking. But there were plenty of receivers... more receivers than transmitters.

THere was a pecking order:
The AR88 and HRO were the top of the hit parade.
CR100 came next
THen for people that couldn't afford those ther were R107, R1155 and 19 sets aplenty. Add in some Canadian 22 sets and there were plenty to go around. Any in poor condition went to be melted down.

19 sets had their 'B set' ripped out, and the DF section of R1155 to make way for built-in power supplies and amplifiers to drive loudspeakers.

Accessories and cables mostly got junked. Nobody needed them enough to pay actual money for them. But many sets got saved even if they suffered modification. What you got depended on what you could afford.

In the mid sixties, on five bob a week pocket money, I saved for all I was worth, did odd jobs and got money for Christmas and birthdays. I bought an AR88. Not everyone could do that, not everyone was so fixated, but it was great. Friends had all sorts of things. R1475s had appeared, the B40 not at that time. THere were legends of something, a Racal RA17 but I'd never heard of anyone who'd even seen one. Legends grow.

So people learned a lot. Stuff got boiled down for parts.

Consequently, nowadays, I don't criticise the people who tore out B sets, DF sections and the like. If those people had not been interested, the government would have had no-one to sell the sets to and they would have been melted down, buried in landfill and chucked down mineshafts (disused, I hope!)

But do not forget the intangibles. A lot of knowledge was learned from people playing about with government surplus radios.

We're all a lot richer nowadays. We don't need to scrape and save to the same extent. If an R1155 isn't stable or selective enough for SSB, then maybe it's not the right set to start out with? Why not find something which is made to do that job?

The wartime sets were right for their era. What the people who modified them in civvy street did was right for their era. A modified set tells you something of WWII and also something og the fifties and sixties. Popular histories and TV documentaries tell you loads about WWII for the forties, all about rock and roll and dress styles for the fifties and swinging pop for the sixties. The modified sets are some of the few things that record an era when people were poorer than now, but also very inventive.

David