G4FPH's Amateur Radio Pages

G4FPH's Amateur Radio Pages - The pre-transmitting years

The pre-transmitting (mostly!) / pre-licensed years

I became interested in listening to short wave radio off the back of my brother's interest in same, which he began around 1971[?]. I remember him having space in a shed in the garden at the rear of our parents' house in east Birmingham, one end of which was given over to electronics and radio. His principal receiver was a Codar CR-70A, connected to a wire aerial which ran down the garden. His receiving log book from those days survives. He enjoyed listening to both far away broadcast stations and radio amateurs. By today’s standards the CR-70A was a terrible receiver, especially for trying to listen to narrow-band signals, and would have required much skill to do so successfully.

I recall him building an oscilloscope using an ex-WD cathode ray tube (VCR-139?); a wiper-delay unit, from an article in Practical Wireless magazine and, possibly, a Heathkit LW/MW car radio. I also recall the brightly coloured knobs of a Marconi T1154 transmitter in one corner of the bench, but think this was just a display piece.

Our mutual interest in radio did not overlap in time much, if at all, sadly. My brother’s attention moved to cars and he disposed of all his electronics and radio equipment. It was only after he did this that I became serious about radio and wanted a ‘station’ of my own.

My own receiving log book starts in 1973[?]. My first receiver was even worse than that of my bother! Another Codar set, this time a ‘Mini-Clipper’, which was a battery-powered, single-valve TRF set, which produced feeble sound in a pair of cheap, Japanese headphones. The receiver had four, or five, plug-in coils each one for a different frequency range. As I recall, the 1.5 and 63[?} Volt batteries it used did not last that long and were non-rechargeable. The joy in using the Mini-Clipper was getting it to hear anything interesting, especially those narrow-band amateur signals, that I was definitely more interested in.

[More to come]

Last modified: 7 August 2026.