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Old 28th Jan 2021, 8:26 pm   #21
Malcolm G6ANZ
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Default Re: Is radio in your genes ?

I can agree with that. My outlook is ‘if somebody can fix this then so can I’. Not always practical to do so but I know my limits. I can turn my hand to electronics, plumbing, clock repair, building etc.
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Old 28th Jan 2021, 8:39 pm   #22
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My interest started with my older brother. He was a TV engineer in the 50's but then I was too young to understand or even be interested. It was just a matter of fact that he fixed the TV when it went wrong or put plugs on things and fixed the lights etc. He was always building stuff and was also a licensed amateur radio operator. None of it meant anything to me until I was about 10...up until then I was fascinated by clocks and had a good many that I'd pulled to pieces and put together again....not always successfully! Then one afternoon (a Wednesday when my brother had a half-day....remember the Wednesday half-day?) I was reading one of my comics and he was fixing the Pye 11U TV which had gone off a few days previously when suddenly it burst into life and a few moments later a picture appeared. I was fascinated by this and went over to see what he had done....the first time I had looked into the back of a TV. I had heard words like 'capacitor', 'resistor', transformer, valve etc many times but had never given them a second thought....until now. Looking into the TV for the first time with valves glowing started me asking innumerable questions about what did what etc. I asked him what he had done to fix it and he produced a long green cylindrical item which he called a 'dropper'....another word I heard before.

Well the rest is history! Clocks were forgotten (not completely...I still dabble with those) and in their place were boxes of radio components, my first crystal set which I was immensely proud of and before long, library books full of interesting circuits. I built a couple of Sinclair kits (the Micro 6 and Micro FM) and then started getting the Radio Constructor magazine every month. Various shortwave sets were built with great success from that magazine in the late 60's and when I started work in 1970, it was with a small radio and TV repair shop. Three years later I got a job with Philips in Croydon and I was there for 40 years.....!
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Old 29th Jan 2021, 1:42 am   #23
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As far as I know no one in my family had much knowledge about radio before me, but when I was about 6 my dad let me play with a crystal set he had made when he was young. It had a lovely variometer and an ebonite base. Who knows? Maybe that was the initial "spark".

About the same time he bought me a train set, my first exposure to circuits and of course more sparks and TVI.
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Old 29th Jan 2021, 1:59 am   #24
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My uncle was a professional electronic engineer who started young - the story goes that as a toddler he stuck his fingers into a mains socket and from that day on the family knew he was going to do something to do with electricity. Legend has it that the family were descended from a well known Scottish family of engineers.

On the other side of my family were a few great uncles who dabbled in home made radios back in the 20's and I remember one of them fixing the family telly when I was young.

I now have a 9 year old lad who is into technology - he's just built himself a working record player out of Knex and Snap Circuits modules (although it needs a little refinement...)
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Old 29th Jan 2021, 8:16 am   #25
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Default Re: Is radio in your genes ?

My own interest for decades is military radios and still have many (down from 130 sets). I don't know how much it influenced me but when I received my grandfather's WW1 service records I discovered he had trained as a wireless operator for the Canadian Army.
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Old 29th Jan 2021, 8:52 pm   #26
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Default Re: Is radio in your genes ?

My dad was a electrical engineer with Nottingham City Transport (NCT) and previously had worked as an electrician before WW2. He always attempted to fix our Tv's, and often did. Seeing him make up a gram console with the first Quad valve amp set me with an interest in electronics. My uncle also worked for the NCT and there was always talk of alternators, starter motors and the virtues of the trolleybuses etc. By the time I was 15 I was making small circuits at home, with a bit of help from my dad of course..

I've three sons, car auction manager, fireman, and claims handler in a call centre, non of which have any interest in what I do. Sometimes genes 'skip' generations, maybe my grandson may have some interest in circuitry.

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Old 30th Jan 2021, 9:53 am   #27
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Default Re: Is radio in your genes ?

If I may stretch 'radio' to include spark equipment then my great-grandad started it all off for my family in the late 19th.

He was apprenticed at Brush Electric but dabbled in spark transmissions, crystal and coherer receivers etc., according to grandad.

Grandad himself trained as a vehicle mechanic but took up radio as a hobby and served as an operator in WWI.

My Dad took up wireless and early electronics as a hobby when very young, entered the RAF in WWII and served as wireless operator/air gunner in Egypt, was then moved to base station operations and maintenance - which included running Hollerith machines, those early mechanical computers.

Dad got me started via the usual '60s-'70s route: bells and lamps, crystal sets, then radios based on battery valves, transistors finally mains valves after which I took flight myself into i.c.s, computer systems, software and so on to a commercial/industrial career with a side interest in amatuer rx/tx.

So if radio can run in our genes, then my family has had it in spades !

Sadly the next generation has turned away from electronics to business, Web publishing and tourism - a sad motto for the UK's dying interest and capability in all engineering.

Cheers, Marty G8PCF
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Old 30th Jan 2021, 12:13 pm   #28
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Default Re: Is radio in your genes ?

I got the radio and electronics bug from my dad. He had some valve radios and listened to radio whilst he was working on repair jobs. Annoyingly, he always removed the radios from the enclosues and had the chassis on display and he used them like that �� No idea why. Sadly I can’t ask him as he died some years ago.
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Old 30th Jan 2021, 12:58 pm   #29
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Default Re: Is radio in your genes ?

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Originally Posted by ValvoStef View Post
Annoyingly, he always removed the radios from the enclosues and had the chassis on display and he used them like that.
I think your dad was ahead of his time judging by the way people like to display their valve amplifiers these days.

As for genes much of this thread seems to suggest learnt behaviour although I'm sure the way the brain works also comes into it.

Alan
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Old 30th Jan 2021, 7:56 pm   #30
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Alan asks is it learned or genetic. Regarding electronics, definitely no parental input, though I did have a cousin on my mothers side who was deep into radio, TV and work (not sure what) for commercial TV. In the early '50s he built his own TV set, later modifying it for "commercial2 on Band 111.
But in the '70's whilst working in the pottery industry, I made big advances in the operation, and later some design input in ceramic kilns.
My mother told me that her grandfather, whilst working for Alfred Meakins, had designed and patented the first gas kiln for glost firing. I never tried to confirm this, but maybe a genetic link?
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Old 30th Jan 2021, 8:16 pm   #31
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Default Re: Is radio in your genes ?

My father was part of REME during WWII - he spent time at Pye in Cambridge learning about all sorts of RADAR [including cavity magnetrons - they were forbidden from using that term and had to talk about 'the thing' instead] - then in the later part of the war he was sent out to Wast-africa to run a long-range-RADAR/DF-site looking-out across the mid-Atlantic, tracking convoys and U-boats.

My mother - in the same timeframe ran a teleprinter network linking south-coast RADAR sites [Chain Home/CHL] back to anti-aircraft-batteries around London, and was also responsible for issuing "Colours of the day" [which defined the altitudes our aircraft would be using - so anti-aircraft gunnery should treat anything not on those altitudes as hostile].

So maybe I had radio in my genes? My parents really didn't talk much about their exploits - the Official Secrets Act was still very much in their minds!
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Old 31st Jan 2021, 12:05 am   #32
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Originally Posted by G6Tanuki View Post

My mother - in the same timeframe ran a teleprinter network linking south-coast RADAR sites [Chain Home/CHL] back to anti-aircraft-batteries around London, and was also responsible for issuing "Colours of the day" [which defined the altitudes our aircraft would be using - so anti-aircraft gunnery should treat anything not on those altitudes as hostile].
This is a newspaper cutting about my late aunt.
The story went around the world, the wartime equivalent of "viral".

In case it's not clear, this is a Brisbane newspaper, and look at the dates, the story was reported just a day after the incident.

Click image for larger version

Name:	nan1.jpg
Views:	78
Size:	68.9 KB
ID:	225628

Sorry for the OT, but I'm very proud of her. No doubt some details were embellished for morale purposes (she did lose an eye), but she and her comrades were a formidable force.
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Old 1st Feb 2021, 11:47 pm   #33
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Default Re: Is radio in your genes ?

Hi.
My dad made some radios before I was born in 1954. Then at least two TV's with VCR97 tubes and lastly a Viewmaster 12inch console that I remember well as we had it till 1961. We lived in Walton-on-Thames till 1957 when we moved to Scotland, I wonder what happened to his creations?
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Old 18th Feb 2021, 3:35 pm   #34
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Default Re: Is radio in your genes ?

For me it was a prerogative that my dad gave me to help me overcome difficulties when I was small. Later, I used it to prove to cynics that I was able to achieve more complex tasks.
My brother took it further as he has now a business repairing radios in Suffolk. Both of us benefited from watching dad restore radios (and televisions) in the 1950's.
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Old 20th Feb 2021, 8:37 am   #35
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Default Re: Is radio in your genes ?

Not for me, radio was always "just a radio" in my family's eyes. I came to it independently through being interested in the 1930's style and liked the look of old sets, I then got the collecting and restoring bug!
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Old 20th Feb 2021, 8:46 am   #36
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Default Re: Is radio in your genes ?

My mum was an 'OWL', operator wireless and line, in WWII, worked receiving coded morse all over the country, my dad was an RAF fitter at the same time, so familiar with the R1155 etc. Neither had the slightest interest in radio when I was around, but I was fascinated in their experiences. Also my mother's parents had the most beautiful 30's set (in my memory) I have never been able to identify.
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Old 20th Feb 2021, 9:46 am   #37
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My grandad had a collection of valve communication receiver that he enjoyed operated but I think probably did not understand as he was a builder. But I know he enjoyed collecting and operating them. He definitely got me hooked at a very early age I would have been twiddling knobs at 3 years old. He bought transistor radios for me from the local flea markets and gave me his Trio 9R. I also had a member of the family who worked for the Manchester cable company as a cable jointer. The story goes he was driven insane after getting an electric shock. Old story sent a boy up the line to confirm the power was off and it wasn’t. The story goes he would sit in the corner pulling the button off his clothing and reattach them with wire all day long.

I have actually spent a lot of time collecting the radio I remember my grandfather having and have most of them now. I just need the one with the big rectangular coil boxes I think it was a Hallicrafter but not sure. Playing with these takes me right back to being on the rug in front of a coal fire with my Grandad. A much loved family member. These connections to the past get more significant as I get older.
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Old 20th Feb 2021, 1:53 pm   #38
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Quote:
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......

I just need the one with the big rectangular coil boxes I think it was a Hallicrafter but not sure.

........
HRO?

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Old 20th Feb 2021, 5:14 pm   #39
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Yes HRO. I new it had a H in it!
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Old 20th Feb 2021, 11:51 pm   #40
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Default Re: Is radio in your genes ?

My grandfather was radio & music mad & somehow I just 'Got it' & understood that radio was where I had to start! He taught me so much, we would collect non workers from jumble sales etc & repair them. Later in the mid 70's I discovered stereo records & cassette machines that could record the 2 channels onto cassette tapes! Back to scrap or broken machines & books & learn how they worked & how to fix them! I remember noticing around 1976 that a magnetic phono cartridge sounded so much better than the ceramics I was used to on the BSR turntables & had to read up on phono stage in integrated amplifiers! Radio & pop music esp go together perfectly & the two shaped my teenage & young adult life totally! By the early 80's things were moving fast & amazing hifi shows & magazines were a must for me! Records & radio were in my genes & cassette technology simply astonished me how fast it progressed! All this was down to my old Grandad who wanted me to do nothing else but be inside a radio phono turntable or a cassette machine & bring it back to life! He never lived to see how my obsession that began with MW/LW basic radio sets progressed! By the late 80's I was mad on repairing VCR's as well as all the earlier tech! No one else I know as a boy were remotely interested in radio or music for that matter! I realised in the 70's that radio = music! Without one there couldn't be the other......Happy days
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