TOT: Weeping for long-gone days

[Bob Eager]

I was tempted to cover up my good eye, go out in the street and look at the eclipse.

[newshound]

Voice Of America

The funny repetative dirge which must have been jamming something.

The woodpecker!

[Huge]

Radio Tirana. They were transmitting illegally in the amateur 7MHz band (IIRC) and used that hideous noise to 'keep their place'.

[sm_jamieson]

When I was a teenager it always used to annoy me that the two main emotions were supposed to be "bored" and "having a laff". Life is much richer than that. I'm not as old as you (I would guess) but nostalgia or yearning for s omething else, the past, even for things that might have been, just makes y ou a rounded human being. When you hear the opening chords of "Jerusalem", when you drive along the rugged Devon coastline, when you remember departed loved ones, various emotions exist to fill those moments and they should b e savoured. And a shared nostalgia helps to hold society together, forming a continuum between past and future. You should probably write some poems. Only worry if you start losing touch with reality (whatever that is !).

Simon.

[Bill Wright]

Sofia Moscow Prague

Bill

[Bill Wright]

Radio City 299 Radio London 266 Radio Scotland 242 Radio England 355 Radio 270 270! Radio Caroline S 199 Radio Caroline N 201 Radio Sutch 197?? Radio 390??

From memory, E & O E

Bill

[Davey]

We had a PYE radiogram, the bottom was a central 'speaker with space for records at each side, above was a slide-out record player deck, and above that the radio section, which sloped back. It had the requisite LW, MW and several SW bands, with many of those broadcasting stations listed. I remember Hilversum for certain, and Rugby. I also remember tuning in to the police, once while they were co-ordinating a chase of somebody in a car waving a machete. Great fun for a kid. When I went to university, I took the deck, the radio chassis and the 'speaker out of the unit, and used them, naked, for my in-room entertainment. H&S would go nuts now!

[NY]

My grandparents bought a brand new radiogram of the wooden cabinet floor-standing variety as late as the mid 1970s. I was surprised that a combined electronic device and item of furniture was still being made as late as that. It was a modern angular (rather rounded) teak cabinet - modern in styling (well, modern for 1970s). I remember when my grandma died in 2002 we couldn't even give it away - no-one wanted it - so I took the innards out and the cabinet made a nice bonfire :-( Easier than trying to fit the whole thing into the back of a car to take it to the tip.

I remember that the pickup of the turntable was very sensitive to jolts so it took a lot of skill after putting the needle onto the record to close the lid *very* gently so the needle didn't get jolted.

[brightside S9]

Wikepedia has an entry for Radio Sutch. Its subseqent owner, Reg Calvert, renamed it Radio City. He was killed by was killed by Major Oliver Smedley, cleared of murder on grounds of self defence.

Potted history here

Reg is (was) a close relation to my wife.

[Graham.]

"Funny repetitive (musical) dirge" sounds like it was more probebly the interval signal of a "Numbers Station" than a jammer.

[Graham.]

I don't remember the noise, just the scary trumpet fanfair

[Graham.]

Yes, the field winding typically was the L in a C-L-C smoothing circuit so it was fed with partially smoothed DC The technique however was usually called "Mains energised speaker".

I'm not sure about Woody's assertion that the field winding was

*called* a humbucking coil, It certainly had a humbucking *effect* when the phase of it, and the speech coil were correct.

[Graham.]

The foul mouthed ones were usually link-calls via Cullercoats ;-)

[DJC]

Noggin the Nog Captain Pugwash Ivor the Engine

[Huge]

That was the noise I was referring to.

Go here, search in the page for "Tirana" and click "Play"

[news]

Yes, it wasn't the interval music I just heard on youtube but a repeated dirge of twelve notes played in the early evening interfering with the light programme.

I think it is a few bars from a classical music piece

AJH

[Windmill]

[............................................]

One click to change the world, One click to reach them One click to bring them all And in the darkness bind them ? :-)

[Windmill]

Those speakers lacked a permanent magnet and used instead an electromagnet whose coil was also the inductance in the HT smoothing filter.

I was always surprised that it didn't introduce more hum than in fact it did.

Resistive line cord was much cheaper than a transformer, but I never had a fire.

Until the appearance of thermistors which limited the turn-on surge through the series string of valve heaters, there was usually one valve which lit alarmingly brightly because its heater was momentarily getting far more than its share of the supply voltage. The heaters didn't all warm up at the same rate.

[Woody]

It's not the video on this page but the 'suggested other viewing down the right side that brings back the memories.

Cy Grant on Tonight Its Friday, Its Five O'clock, Its................... Pinky and Perky

sobs quietly in a corner..............................

[DerbyBorn]

What was the Line Cord?