24 October 2011
Comments and recollections
received since June update
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Dear Les, I was very pleased to find your website as, although I do not remember
the name of Gilbert Davey, I often wondered who designed the BOP Cycle Radio I built
back in the early 1950's. I was away at school in E Yorkshire and my mother
sent me the BOP every month. I was taught about radio by a very knowledgeable
boy who encouraged me to have a go at the Cycle Radio. We must have sent away
for 'more info', as we had a theoretical diagram, full circuit description, and a
practical layout diagram. I remember getting the two HL2 valves as 'swaps'
with other boys, but went to the local Radio Relay station to get a PM22A output
valve. I could not get a miniature loudspeaker, so I got the set working with
earphones from a one-valver I already had. It worked fine, but I hankered
after complete portability and made a frame aerial version of it. I never
tried to use it on a bicycle! I both kept up with the hobby and made a
career out of it. I went into the Royal Signals for National Service as an
electronic technician, and on dempb carried on with studies at the Regents Poly
in London. I ended up in a design lab working on military airborne
radios/radioaltimeters etc. Later on I went on the road for Texas Instruments,
and eventually ran the Hitachi Europe semiconductor operation. In retirement
I still like to design my own radios, mostly using field effect transistors which
are a bit like mini valves! It's like a virus in the bloodstream, and sets
like the 'Cycle Radio' started it off for me. Late extra - I have just
managed to locate the 1957 Fun with Radio on Amazon and look forward very
much to reading it. Thanks again for your letter to Practical Wireless,
which brought this to my attention.
James Duckworth.
Thanks for your message, James - it's always good to hear how people got started.
If James builds the Cycle Radio, it will be interesting to compare his
set with Hugh Castellan's set (pictures already on this site).
In July, I received the following messages from gents who both remember building
the BBC Focus transistor radio in 1959:
Hi Les, Just happened across your website . . . EXCELLENT! I built
the [Focus] 3 transistor radio in 1959 -
remember being ill in bed and being allowed up to watch one relevant session!
I remember the leaflet - like a folded sheet of Radio Times - but alas it has
long since disappeared. I remember being sold surplus transistors that
generated an immense amount of noise, later replaced with Mullard OC71, from memory
at £1-10s-0d each, an immense amount at the time! All was constructed inside
a cedar cigar box from a friend’s father who supplied all my “cabinets” for years!
73, Stephen Curtis, VK3CAX, but currently doing some work in Cheltenham!
Hi Les, just found your site while looking for info on my first transistor radio
that I thought was featured on Blue Peter around 1958-ish. I remember
writing in for a leaflet, and spending weeks of accrued pocket money on 2 transistors,
red spots if I recall correctly. Anyway after looking at your site I guess
it was probably the 1959 [Focus] design -
Hmmm . . . This was just after my 14th birthday - and I used my pocket money
and birthday money to buy the 2 red spots. I can still remember the look on my mother's
face when she saw what I had spent ALL my money on! Over the next year or so,
I added an audio amp and speaker, and Dad built a box to house it all. It had
a wire with a croc clip, and we'd go out on Sunday afternoon in our old van,
stop somewhere with a wire fence, and hook it on! A couple of years later I
applied to Southampton University for one of a handful of places in the new Electronics
course. They had many applicants, all with top grades - so the tie breaker was
"Tell us what you have built?" I know that this project, and the subsequent
mods, were key to me getting accepted. That's how I got started down the career
path that lasted 50 years, most at IBM, and ended with billion-transistor chips
running a Ghz! Without that I would probably have become the 3rd generation in
the family Fish Shop.
Chris Parker.
Glad you both enjoyed the site. That's quite a career path, Chris - red spots
to gigahertz chips! I will be seeking permission to publish the Focus
transistor leaflet on the site in due course.
Hello Les, I came across your web site today, and it brought back a lot of
memories. I was 9 years old in 1962 and got a copy of Fun with Radio
from my local library, and it was this that set me off on my professional career.
I built a lot of radios in my youth and then went to University, and became an
electronics engineer in the mid-1970s. When you do it professionally, the "fun"
goes out of it and so my hobby died. A few years ago out of nostalgia, I asked
a book shop if they could get hold of a copy of Fun With Radio. Six months
later they called me and said they had a copy - it's the 4th edition and it came all the
way from New Zealand. It has a written inscription: "Happy Birthday Donald, 11 yrs
Sept 1966", and is stamped Marsden Book Co., Napier. I am now 57 and unemployed,
(due to age discrimination - they don't want old electronic engineers it seems) and
discovering your web site brought a smile to my face. Perhaps I'll knock up a
three valve TRF "For Bedside or Camp" - just for Fun. I like your battery box idea.
Regards, Phil Robinson.
Thanks, Phil - I will be very interested to hear if you do decide to build the "Bedside or
Camp" set, or indeed any other Davey design! I am planning to widen gradually the
scope of the site to include sets other than the one-valvers. And if "Donald"
is out there somewhere, it would be great to hear from you!
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