Old radio gear

[Hawkey01]

Watching an episode of - Salvage Hunters - last evening Drew Pritchard was visiting a diesel museum in west Wales. One clip showed a storage room - old machinery etc - and I spied a couple of what looked like a CR receiver and also what looked like the front of a Marconi Tx of some kind. Unfortunately it was not shown again. Maybe someone might want to contact them and see if they have any ex radio gear.
The museum is called - Internal Fire museum - and it is in Tan-y-Groes Cardigan. It has a web site.
They have a very large collection of diesels - lots of W.H. Allen. Certainly looked like a good place to visit if you are that way.

Neville

[Ron Stringer]

Originally Posted by Hawkey01

The museum is called - Internal Fire museum - and it is in Tan-y-Groes Cardigan. It has a web site.
They have a very large collection of diesels - lots of W.H. Allen. Certainly looked like a good place to visit if you are that way.

Neville

They also have a Marconi station that includes a Challenger transmitter - the best, and the last, MF/HF transmitter made for pre-GMDSS radio stations.

[Tony Selman]

The Internal Fire Museum has quite a lot of former seagoing radio equipment, a lot of which has been put their way by the ROA. They took some of the equipment that had been at HMS Collingwood and they also took about half of the equipment that became available when the Radio Room at Fort Perch Rock in New Brighton was forced to close. I have not visited the museum but I believe it is very good and I know the curator quite well.

[Hawkey01]

Ron,Tony,

Thanks for that info. It certainly looked like a good museum to visit. A bit of a hike from me unless
heading that way for a few days.

Neville

[Tony Selman]

Neville, it is not very handy for anyone unless you live in West Wales I suppose. Did several of the little railways in Wales a few years ago but did not know about it then. Might dust that visit down again and drop into the museum.

[freddythefrog]

Hyer Neville
The museum in Wales you talk about also has many circuit diagrams of marine radio equipment from different eras and manufacturers, they also now have a complete KH main station working fine I believe
and have included many more pieces of radio gear from Fort Perch Rock closed down radio museum
as Tony has also mentioned.So if anyone looking for cct diagrams try here! cheers 73;s de ftf

[Hawkey01]

ftf,

Interesting. Hope sometime to get over that way and have a visit to the museum.

Neville

[Lucy Knight]

Neville

Stan Macnally was heading the Fort Perch radio group that donated the radio gear.. His radio group then moved to Planet Lightship, then to old tug Francis Haywood in Albert Dock. Stan is on S/N. He would know the details of the radio gear that was donated to the museum in Wales. So would others in LMRES group based on Liverpool. If one lives over 30 miles from Liverpool Pierhead one can be associate member for yearly £5 and receive the monthly email newsletter, if you have a couple of years R/Os time in.

Also an ex R/O now retired Charles Marshall (on S/N) has a job at Sandford Mill Marconi museum and has posted on S/N about it and he has access to records etc. There was article in the latest LMRES newletter.

Lucy

[Hawkey01]

Lucy,

Thanks for the info.

Neville

[Lucy Knight]

This article was in the monthly LMRES newsletter a few days ago.

Marconi Marine at the Sandford Mill Technical Museum, Chelmsford The following has been received from Charles Marshall, an ex MN Radio Officer... As a ‘Friend’ Sanford Mill Industrial, part of Chelmsford Museums (https://www.chelmsford.gov.uk/museums/ ) . Firstly, I would like to let you know that at Sanford Mill Museum on the outskirts of Chelmsford, we have various mock-up Radio Rooms, dating from Pre Titanic to the Radio Officers” end of play” at the end of the last century. Along with several equipments that we have on display i.e. samples ranging from the CR.100 to Atlanta Receiver to the Apollo from MIMCO (and also various Sailor, Kelvin Hughes and Eddystone kit et al. I have been cataloguing the “Technical Library” there. Believe me there are a LOT of books, Periodicals etc., I am on the downward slope but these is still at least 18 months’ work in front of me to catalogue the collection; by the time it is finished it will be one of the best Historic Libraries in East Anglia. The collection from the Marconi Marine perspective is unique, I have come across several of the handbooks written by the Marconi Wireless & Telegraph Company & Marconi International Marine Company Ltd. which I have seen nowhere else, honestly the products that MIMCO has manufactured is amazing from Hospital Bleeper and Intercom systems to Commander Transmitters. What I want to say to you is that because of the above, if anyone needs some technical information i.e. circuit diagrams, layouts etc. for I may be able to help, However please note I will provide electronic media only (no Photostat copies), the pension only goes so far. Currently I am also trying to get together a new radio room covering late 1970’s/1980’s, filling a gap in our collection that needs plugging, we have the majority of Marconi Marine equipment in the collection to start with, we have most of the “receiving equipment side “ e.g. Apollo & Nebular, Emergency Receivers. And Aerial Box, VHF, AKD and a Reliant Emergency Transmitter. What we need to complete the “set” is main transmitter, e.g. NT201, Commander, Crusader or Conqueror et al.( If you know of one (or all) of these Transmitters slowly degrading in a shed, garage in storage or in a museums archive that they want to have go to a good home and could be “donated” to the Sandford Mill Museum can you please contact us to see if we can agree terms ?). Another topic I have been researching is a display regarding the daily routine of an R/O from the crews perspective. So far I have crew notice board versions of the MIMCO Interflora ad, the Kay's ad, and a Disc Token adverts plus (SLT's - I even have one of GK Services), What I need badly is a copy of a Vernon's Pools advert to complete the set. ( If you know of any others from other companies we would welcome copies of other Notice Board ads for radio services to the crew from other companies).. If we can help you please do not hesitate to contact us., Best regards, Charles Marshall Ex MN Radio Officer If anybody can help Charles then let me know and I’ll pass it on.

[BobClay]

This might seem a bit of a misnomer given the title of this thread … or it could just be we're all older than we like to think. I'm referring to SDR radio (Software Defined Radio.) You'd hardly think this could enter the description of 'Old radio gear' but .. given the speed of software and computer equipment advancement, 'Old' has become time dilated.

Since going on the air as an amateur, less than a year ago, I've become interested in SDR to the point of obsession. Much more than a year ago, I'd never heard of it other than some sort of novelty on various websites …. a particularly good one is:

http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/

to give you a taste.

So I've invested in a small SDR radio (not much bigger than a Swan Vestas matchbox) and I'm stunned at its capabilities. Still gobsmacked by this one day I was mooching about on Ebay and I noticed what was classified as an ancient SDR radio, a FLEX 3000, so more out of curiosity (as much about the software the box itself) I bid on it and was the only bidder !!

FLEX are still going, but this set is long out of production. It connects to the computer by firewire, which I had to buy a PCIE card for as my machine didn't have that port. Connected it all up, installed the PowerSDR software and away you go. It's utterly stunning.

The blue box you can see is the FLEX. I put the Handbook by it to give you an idea of its size, (much larger than the other SDR set.) The software display that controls it is alongside. The world map shows the position of the Sun, the Moon and the ISS against and it has bells and whistles to infinity and back again and every kind of display from spectrum analyser to waterfall to others that are downright weird.

The FLEX is not just a receiver, it's a 100 watt transceiver, hence the meaty power supply.

I still can't quite get over these advances since my days sailing with an R50M

Yet this FLEX is now an old banger !! …..

[Farmer John]

You do have a bit of a thing about radio, Bob. I think I spy 2 radio switched sockets on your desk, I will go that far myself, but I think you are leading me into deeper waters.

[BobClay]

Well that's sort of what a Radio Room should look like. Full of stuff that nobody really knows where it came from or what it is about (including me.)

I've got a Tardis door on mine which I painted up myself.

Seemed appropriate …

[Hawkey01]

Bob,

Well! found out what SDR means and started to read it up. Fell asleep after the first few lines. No idea what it is about. What do you do with it now you have the Rx. Bring back the 807 - ECH81.

Neville

[BobClay]

Well Neville a few specs from the RSP Duo receiver I have which is literally about the size of a Swan Vestas matchox.
You plug it in to a USB port and an aerial. (It gets it's power from the USB.)

Now the shocking bit …

Frequency coverage: 1 kHz to 2 GHz (no gaps.)

All the control of course comes from software on a PC, which is pretty much free (there are many SDR software packages out there.)

Now I accept people (and I'm sort of one of them in a way) prefer some proper knobs and dials to mooch about on the airwaves, but when I bought the FLEX the seller also included a DJ Midi controller which you can plug into the computer and map the SDR controls to various knobs and dials so you can actually turn and switch things rather than mouse click. You know, just like on an Atalanta ..

I haven't got round to fiddling with that yet, as I've got about six gazillion more controls to figure out what they do.

If you look at the link I posted above you get a flavour of what SDR is about. (I can sadly report I was using that link on my phone to listen to some morse a few weeks ago in the pub !!! ) I got some funny looks.

Have I finally gone Portis in the Head.