School Days and Do-It-Yourself Radio

My first attempt at radio was rather similar to that described by Richard Feynman in his autobiographical books - not that I would dare to compare myself to this great scientist!

What happened was that a friend and I, - his name was Coombes - (we did not use first names in those days)  and I decided to start a Radio Society,  and while looking around the school buildings, saw what seemed to be a lean-to shed, tacked onto the end of one of the classrooms. I'm not sure which came first, the idea of the radio Society, or what use we could make of the shed. It apparently was not in use and did not belong to anybody, so we took it over.

One day the Headmaster, known as CBC, came walking by, just as we were leaving the shed. He stopped, moved towards us and asked "What is this?" in an inquiring tone. We said "this is the new Canford Radio Society room, Sir". he poked his head inside the door and said, "Very interesting"!  The poor chap hadn't got a clue because at that time there was hardly anything in the room.

About the first thing we did was to screw some two-pin plugs into a bench that was already there, and then tapped into the mains wiring. We growing lads were always hungry (it was wartime and rations were thin) so one of our first exploits was to make a toaster. We found some wire from a discarded electric heater and stretched the springy wire around some nails driven into a wooden plank. By trial and error we found the right length and connected the contraption to the mains, which in England is a lethal 240 volts.  We toasted many slices of bread, spread with marge and jam.

We already had a few rudimentary tools, including a soldering iron and some solder.  I had already made a crystal set at home in the holidays so decided to construct a three tube Tuned Radio Frequency medium wave radio connected to headphones for listening to the BBC and at night AFN (Armed Forces Radio from Munich).

It was compulsory to join the Combined Cadet Force and go on Field Days. We had some old radios - 38 sets,     several 18 sets , and two 19 sets used in tanks.
{Work in progress}