An interesting post from Lozz about various radios. My father told me about 19 sets and I used to ogle some of the others in our local electronics emporium in the 1960s. At Bletchley Park, I've never seen so many AR88s!

There must be some members/subscribers on this forum, to the BCRA C*** Radio & Electronics Group. Perhaps we could start a new thread?
A couple of years ago, I took a domestic radio into Temple Mine at Matlock Bath. Just inside the adit, the VHF stations went followed by the medium wave stations a few yards further. Radio 4 on long wave continued and I heard some years ago that it was heard several hundred feet underground in France.

73 de G7GEX (and Talyllyn Railway volunteer)

I must find out a little more about the trials at Wheal Maid. I believe the guy that was experimenting is still a member of the local Radio club (CRAC). I think I'll make a few calls and see if I can track him down. It would be useful as an historical record to attach to the history I have already have on the place.
Still got FT480, Baofeng UV-5R and a mint FT201.
73 de G7WJJ 🙂

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Are you guys SSB or CW or even AM 'phone?

Lozz.

Not really military dumps but Ding Dong Mine in Furness had all sorts of old car parts dumped down it in the 1950's and 60's. I know because I helped pull a lot of them out.

However the real treasures of Ding-Dong lay below that where a local butchers/abbatoir had been dumping their waste down there for years before.

So for all you thrill-seekers, having descended the 90' entrance shaft you get to slip on the greasy red mud which covers bits of old cars and impale yourself on various cow parts sticking up through the floor.

Happy Exploring! :lol:

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Gosh, there's Ding Done mines everywhere.

Lozz.

A friend of mine, some time ago now, was out mooching over the cliffs above the Hanover cove area looking for minerals. Digging into a spoil pile on the edge of the cliff he cam up with a lump of something looking like it may be mining related. He took it home, and to descale it chucked it onto the fire.
A while later there was an enormous explosion which blew the fire out of the grate and all over the sitting room. Emergency services were called and it transpired that the item he found was an old piece of ordnance, probably from when the aerodrome was being decommissioned. He was lucky not to have been sitting in front of it at the time.
The article made the local rag in which he said that he though it was a miners pin....whatever that is :lol:

Just as an aside and completely off topic....
Lozz et al, I'm 2M VHF and 70cms at present. Can hit GB3NC from my place on 2W so probably be able to work you simplex if I can figure out the channel programming on this Baofeng) on the handy or might need to give it the full 4W. :thumbup:

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Hi Roy, TX wise I am not licensed, got up to 18 WPM RX and 12 WPM TX on CW when I was a young lad studying for my radio officers license to join the merchant navy, didn't complete my studies, a young lady got in the way (not the family way)

Lozz.

Lots of radio stuff comes up for auction exmod stuff but I assume its useless cause will use military frequencies - how do you use wwII radios if they use the old frequencies?

Lots of radio stuff comes up for auction exmod stuff but I assume its useless cause will use military frequencies - how do you use wwII radios if they use the old frequencies?

Ex MOD stuff is not allways useless, depends wether you want to transmitt, recieve or both, it also depends if it has designated fixed channels or variable tuning, most can be modified for amature radio use but you will need an advanced licence to transmitt with modified equipment if you want to stay legal, one of the requirments of the licence is that the transmitting equipment must not radiate above a certain power level outside the allocated amature spectrum, a good radio engineer can modify them to tune a wide range of frequencies, If the unit is cheap enough they can be scraped for spares as the components within are likely to have been manufactured to military specification and possibly be tropicalized, these components can be valuable in themselves.

There is no such thing as an old frequency as such as a frequency is determined by the laws of physics, only the allocation thereof.
Most comms recievers from WW2 cover the spectrum from around 500 Khz to 30 Mhz, some go even lower down to VLF, this means that you can use them to recieve a wide spectrum of transmissions from the 60Khz clock through to local AM radio through to all the shortwave amature and AM broadcast bands, including CB up to 30Mhz, I use mine regularly to listen to Radio Cornwall one minute and an amature transmssion from Australia who might be operating with as little as 10 watts of power or less the next, not to mention oceanic aircraft transmissions etc, also the number stations and all that clandestine/diplomatic/military stuff if you are into that.

Hope this is of some use.

Lozz.

Just as an addition a lot of stuff has crystals in them (Xtals) these are machined from our old friend Quartz, Quartz can be ground down to resonate at a particular frequency when excited, when resonating it is extremely accurate ie: within a few parts per million, it also exhibits a series and parallel mode within a few hertz of it's designated frequency and of a very narrow pass band, this property can be used to great effect in radio communications.
In the early days our old friend Galena or even Iron Pyrites or coal was used as a detector to detect the transmission envelope, a semiconductor in effect. These were later replaced with Germanium and latterly Silicon, both of these are doped with an impurity to give what is called a PN junction, most common transistors have two junctions and are designated as PNP or NPN depending which common mode polarity they are operating in, NPN now being the most common in use.

Lozz.

It was said in N Staffs that a lot of HROs went down a shaft at Park Hall Colliery IIRC.
In answer to previous, mainly SSB on 160 & occasional AM on N Staffs Sun net.
40m might be good for an ocasional mining net?
Sorry about the delay in replying, been working in Germany.

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