Radio room photos

[Hawkey01]

As we are trying to have photos in all categories we would like some Radio Room photos in the Marine Radio category.

Thanks
Neville - Hawkey01

[Tony Selman]

Neville, I actually have a lot of Radio Room photos that were not used in either of our books from The Radio Officers Association (ROA). I will dig some out.
Tony

[Dartskipper]

Quick question chaps. Did either of you know Peter Barber who contributed a record of radio officers' records in WWII to the Marconi Archives?

He became a friend of my Father when Dad was writing about the events of Convoy UC1.

Regards,

Roy.

[Tony Selman]

Almost certain I do not know him Roy. The name rings the vaguest of bells but not for the reason you state. We (the ROA) refer a lot of people to the Marconi archives at The Bodleian with some quite good results.

[Dartskipper]

Thanks for the reply Tony. I couldn't be sure. Dad and I both attended his funeral, where we met his friend and former colleague George Monk who lived in Sussex. I believe George has also crossed the bar, as I haven't had word from him since a few Christmases ago.

Best regards,
Roy.

[Tony Selman]

Roy, George went Silent Key a few years ago. He was a good man and great supporter of the ROA.

[Hawkey01]

Tony,

Thanks - that would be excellent.


Roy,

Sorry I did not know him.

Neville.

[Tony Selman]

Found a few Neville and will upload soon. Cannot find the file size limit, is it 500kb as per SN?

Tony

[Gulpers]

Originally Posted by Tony Selman

Found a few Neville and will upload soon. Cannot find the file size limit, is it 500kb as per SN?

Tony

Tony,

To be honest, I'm not sure; however, Steve posted this on one of the other threads here.

Hi
I think the max size is now very big, so just upload and see what happens! by the way as soon as some decent images appear we can remove the test ones I took and add some good images for the categories.

thanks

Steve

[Dartskipper]

Originally Posted by Tony Selman

Roy, George went Silent Key a few years ago. He was a good man and great supporter of the ROA.

Thank you Tony, just as I thought. Dad and I both enjoyed meeting George, and valued his acquaintance. It's nice to know that he was so well regarded.

Roy.

[Dartskipper]

Originally Posted by Hawkey01

Tony,

Thanks - that would be excellent.


Roy,

Sorry I did not know him.

Neville.

Neville, I think you would have enjoyed knowing Peter. He and Dad exchanged numerous letters, but sadly they never met in person, living quite a few miles apart. I am still in contact with Peter's son.

Regards,

Roy.

[ChasD]

Originally Posted by Tony Selman

Found a few Neville and will upload soon. Cannot find the file size limit, is it 500kb as per SN?

Tony

Just put in a bunch, max size seems to be 400 x 600 pxls. Had to do a bit of tweaking as kept getting error messages that they were oversize. Most of these I have posted in the past on SN. Hope this does not break any protocols !
More to come on a 'round tooit' basis.


Regards Chas

[Gulpers]

Originally Posted by ChasD

............... Most of these I have posted in the past on SN. Hope this does not break any protocols ! ................
Regards Chas

No problem at all Chas - if they are your own photographs, you can do what you want with them.

[ChasD]

All my stuff! Many of which I did - or supervised - the installation of. The Drupa conversion was, perhaps best described as 'Unofficial'. The Redifon rig was not well suited to a high workload operation, however while in drydock at Falmouth, we had a walk around the Marconi storeroom, found they had an up to date Conqueror/Nebula rig in stock, removed from another vessel. Managed to 'Blag' the store chap to 'deliver' it on board, did a DIY installation, sent the old stuff ashore. Had it surveyed, presented MIMCO and STUK with the 'Fait Accompli', they decided better to do the paperwork than put it all back- job done!
Did have a fair bit of experience in 'cutting edge' stuff with STUK, the first installation of a 'Crusader'; was done on Amoria, suddenly found I had the loudest shout on the ocean 1kw vs the usual T10A (which it replaced) and Oceanspan. Later we did the testing of the 'Selcall' system and 'Lincompex' on Mangelia, (call number for the tests 45500 - I can still whistle the tones!) in 1970. Fitted the first selcall/telex system on Drupa (45501) then the first satellite system (1443401) on Genota. Wonderful, leading edge stuff in those days, seemed no end to the possibilities. Though it was visibly inevitable where it would end. The old key clatterer days were well forecast to be on the way out. Now? Now I struggle to keep up with W10 - but I can do a damn site more with it than with a T10A and a morse key!
Best ! ... Chas

[ChasD]

Originally Posted by ChasD

Just put in a bunch, max size seems to be 400 x 600 pxls. Had to do a bit of tweaking as kept getting error messages that they were oversize. Most of these I have posted in the past on SN. Hope this does not break any protocols !
More to come on a 'round tooit' basis.


Regards Chas

Also found system doesn't seem to like BMP files too much. Will load but system seems to have trouble displaying them. Changed to JPEG and re-loaded with no problem

[Lucy Knight]

Originally Posted by ChasD

All my stuff! Many of which I did - or supervised - the installation of. The Drupa conversion was, perhaps best described as 'Unofficial'. The Redifon rig was not well suited to a high workload operation, however while in drydock at Falmouth, we had a walk around the Marconi storeroom, found they had an up to date Conqueror/Nebula rig in stock, removed from another vessel. Managed to 'Blag' the store chap to 'deliver' it on board, did a DIY installation, sent the old stuff ashore. Had it surveyed, presented MIMCO and STUK with the 'Fait Accompli', they decided better to do the paperwork than put it all back- job done!
Did have a fair bit of experience in 'cutting edge' stuff with STUK, the first installation of a 'Crusader'; was done on Amoria, suddenly found I had the loudest shout on the ocean 1kw vs the usual T10A (which it replaced) and Oceanspan. Later we did the testing of the 'Selcall' system and 'Lincompex' on Mangelia, (call number for the tests 45500 - I can still whistle the tones!) in 1970. Fitted the first selcall/telex system on Drupa (45501) then the first satellite system (1443401) on Genota. Wonderful, leading edge stuff in those days, seemed no end to the possibilities. Though it was visibly inevitable where it would end. The old key clatterer days were well forecast to be on the way out. Now? Now I struggle to keep up with W10 - but I can do a damn site more with it than with a T10A and a morse key!
Best ! ... Chas

I sailed on both the Shell Tanker S.S. Mangelia (supertanker) and Shell tanker MV Amoria.
The Mangelia had a Crusader in 1975, which gave endless problems. Station was Marconuli rental maintanence and QRT but direct employed Shell R/Os. The Crusader problems were usually
intermittent faults eg cracked I.F. coil, ledex switch wafer arcing through. It resulted with new pa stage being dropped by Chopper off Capetown. Ship was sold to Greeks in 76. The Shell R/O who was on board then got permission to take the Japanese Geisha doll the Shipyard had presented ship which lived in glass case.home and it
takes pride of place in his sitting room in South of England. I have a photo of her.

The tx aerials on Mangelia were whip aerials attached to the funnel. The Capt Capt Skelton) was furious with the radio dept when one fell off due to vibration and nearly speared him. It was deliberate wasn't it?

I also sailed on MV Amoria in 1978. It wasn't a Crusader tx on board then. Think had been Redifon station prior to Shell direct employing R/Os . Certainly the QRC was still Redifon. Worst aspect of the Amoria was the ship having no bilge keels and she would have rolled on wet grass. I was pretty small build then and went flying on many occasions.

[Varley]

A lady that favours whips. You will do well on SH (and SN!)!

You shouldn't try to overload the final stage and driver just to weaponise the aerials. Especially if you forget to switch off the HT when switching as this burns at least one ledex!

Do the lady ETOs have a sorority? One of my best technicians was Jeanette MacFarlane - she ran into some heavy chauvinist opposition which ended her with Denholm's (not from me I might add although I can't say I was much of an effective champion).

[Engine Serang]

Bloody sparkys and their wireless shacks.
Do any chief stewards have photographs of the dry goods store?
Perhaps bosuns can help with a photo of the paint locker.

I'm currently making a model of a marconi radar out of matchsticks and sticky back plastic and when completed I'll post a photo of it to excite all my mates.

[ChasD]

Hi Lucy, Think it was about early ’64, probably Teesport, when a bunch of guys from Chelmsford turned up with ‘ A pressie for you !’ which turned out to be a pre-production Crusader, bit strange as I was Seimens/AEI in those days, but it went in and it worked ! Great for when we went from there out east. Plenty of shout, but lots of trouble especially with the ledexes!
Think Mangelia had a Crusader/ Pennant rig, that would be 1970, again a surprise visit by a bunch of guys with boxes. The Lincompex, rather a strange beast which took the usual audio signal and pushed every half cycle to max level so that the transmitter was driven flat out continuously, the idea being that it would punch through anything. A sidetone told the receiving end how much the signal had been ‘modified’ so it could ‘un-modify’ back to original. Fine idea but I don’t think it came to much. Landsend/ GLD had one, as did GKA but as few, if any at all, ships had one it didn’t come to much.
The ‘Selcall’ was literally a ‘Breadboard’ mock up, on a piece of plywood. At random points in the day, GKA would bash their test button, make a test call, chunter some nonsense via Lincompex, which was recorded on a Philips cassette and I had to try to analyse why it didn’t function properly!
Fine while we were on the same time scale, pain in the butt when we weren’t!
The whips were forever loosing bits, cracking insulators, fortunately no injuries, but more than a pain.


Regards ... Chas

[Varley]

ES is just miffed because his matchstick model of a Gotaverken oversped. All he's got left is one Swan Vesta exhaust valve yoke and his turn ups full of splinters.

[Wismajorvik]

Originally Posted by ChasD

Hi Lucy, Think it was about early ’64, probably Teesport, when a bunch of guys from Chelmsford turned up with ‘ A pressie for you !’ which turned out to be a pre-production Crusader, bit strange as I was Seimens/AEI in those days, but it went in and it worked ! Great for when we went from there out east. Plenty of shout, but lots of trouble especially with the ledexes!
Think Mangelia had a Crusader/ Pennant rig, that would be 1970, again a surprise visit by a bunch of guys with boxes. The Lincompex, rather a strange beast which took the usual audio signal and pushed every half cycle to max level so that the transmitter was driven flat out continuously, the idea being that it would punch through anything. A sidetone told the receiving end how much the signal had been ‘modified’ so it could ‘un-modify’ back to original. Fine idea but I don’t think it came to much. Landsend/ GLD had one, as did GKA but as few, if any at all, ships had one it didn’t come to much.
The ‘Selcall’ was literally a ‘Breadboard’ mock up, on a piece of plywood. At random points in the day, GKA would bash their test button, make a test call, chunter some nonsense via Lincompex, which was recorded on a Philips cassette and I had to try to analyse why it didn’t function properly!
Fine while we were on the same time scale, pain in the butt when we weren’t!
The whips were forever loosing bits, cracking insulators, fortunately no injuries, but more than a pain.


Regards ... Chas

Lincompex was used primarily on point to point HF circuits. At the TX end audio was split in two paths, one path was amplified to nearly a constant level, the sybillic rate used to frequency modulate a pilot signal at 2960hz. At the RX end the demodulated pilot was used to vary the level of the received audio re-creating the original. Or something like that...did a course in '68 and worked live on the kit in '76.

[ChasD]

Originally Posted by Wismajorvik

Lincompex was used primarily on point to point HF circuits. At the TX end audio was split in two paths, one path was amplified to nearly a constant level, the sybillic rate used to frequency modulate a pilot signal at 2960hz. At the RX end the demodulated pilot was used to vary the level of the received audio re-creating the original. Or something like that...did a course in '68 and worked live on the kit in '76.

Now that you mention it, it rings a bell that it was used in fixed point-point, finding a home there rather than the sea-going environment. All very much ' a universe far - far - away !'


Regards ... Chas

[Dave McGouldrick]

Having been at sea about 6/7 years (1977ish), thought I knew about most types of radio communication. Then I was contacted by a drilling company in Aberdeen. The guy asked me what I knew about Tropospheric Scatter - duh ? Never even heard of it.

[Engine Serang]

Turn ups !!! You're showing your age. Maybe its your demob suit.

[Wismajorvik]

Originally Posted by Dave McGouldrick

Having been at sea about 6/7 years (1977ish), thought I knew about most types of radio communication. Then I was contacted by a drilling company in Aberdeen. The guy asked me what I knew about Tropospheric Scatter - duh ? Never even heard of it.

10kw klystrons, 800Mhz, water cooled....what memories