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Old August 16th 04, 01:37 AM
Reg Edwards
 
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The place was the same lab in Hong Kong.

There was a chinese lady who came in each day to sweep the floor and remove
the EF50 valves, etc, which had been replaced because of low cathode
emission.

It was my habit to point the radar scanner into the room, stand in the beam
and quickly put put a neon lamp into my mouth. The lamp always lit up
brightly.

Whenever I did this the lady used to run out of the room terrified at the
magic sight.

Just the sort of trick a 21-year-old RAF radar mechanic would play.

Being in the Far East, the anti-radar defence rumour, spread by the Germans,
that exposure to radar beams caused sterilisation to radar mechanics had not
reached me.

Anyway, as my wife at intervals some years later allowed me to think, I
eventually became the father of 5 children.
---
Reg


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Old August 16th 04, 02:46 AM
Paul Burridge
 
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On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 00:37:32 +0000 (UTC), "Reg Edwards"
wrote:

Being in the Far East, the anti-radar defence rumour, spread by the Germans,
that exposure to radar beams caused sterilisation to radar mechanics had not
reached me.

Anyway, as my wife at intervals some years later allowed me to think, I
eventually became the father of 5 children.


Perhaps you shoulda stood a bit closer to the waveguides, Reg. You'd
have been rich by now without all those kids. Plus you might even have
grown an extra brain. ;-)
--

"What is now proved was once only imagin'd." - William Blake, 1793.
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Old August 16th 04, 04:06 AM
Gregg
 
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Behold, Paul Burridge signalled from keyed 4-1000A filament:

On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 00:37:32 +0000 (UTC), "Reg Edwards"
wrote:

Being in the Far East, the anti-radar defence rumour, spread by the
Germans, that exposure to radar beams caused sterilisation to radar
mechanics had not reached me.

Anyway, as my wife at intervals some years later allowed me to think, I
eventually became the father of 5 children.


Perhaps you shoulda stood a bit closer to the waveguides, Reg. You'd
have been rich by now without all those kids. Plus you might even have
grown an extra brain. ;-)


You mean his widow wouldda been rich ;-)

--
Gregg t3h g33k
"Ratings are for transistors....tubes have guidelines"
http://geek.scorpiorising.ca
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Old August 16th 04, 05:00 AM
Reg Edwards
 
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"Paul Burridge" wrote

Perhaps you shoulda stood a bit closer to the waveguides, Reg. You'd
have been rich by now without all those kids. Plus you might even have
grown an extra brain. ;-)


==============================

Paul,

I could have been even richer if I'd charged for all those computer
programs. But I have been much happier just by producing them instead of
setting up a waste-of-my-time sales and marketing organisation. But it's a
fact I never realised at the outset how popular they would become. I was
under the impression I was a late-comer to the field. But it seems I was
not. I was perhaps the originator of this type of program.

And I am confiding in you, even now, only because I am half-way down a
bottle of Californian medium-sweet white. Must keep international relations
in good order.
---
Yours, Reg, Amateur radio station G4FGQ


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Old August 16th 04, 07:18 PM
Paul Burridge
 
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On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 04:00:56 +0000 (UTC), "Reg Edwards"
wrote:

Paul,

I could have been even richer if I'd charged for all those computer
programs. But I have been much happier just by producing them instead of
setting up a waste-of-my-time sales and marketing organisation. But it's a
fact I never realised at the outset how popular they would become. I was
under the impression I was a late-comer to the field. But it seems I was
not. I was perhaps the originator of this type of program.

And I am confiding in you, even now, only because I am half-way down a
bottle of Californian medium-sweet white. Must keep international relations
in good order.


Well you're doin' a great job, Reg. Keep it up! What's the next
program you've got in mind to write? And which language to you
generally use for this purpose?
--

"What is now proved was once only imagin'd." - William Blake, 1793.


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Old August 16th 04, 10:42 PM
Reg Edwards
 
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Paul wrote -
Well you're doin' a great job, Reg. Keep it up! What's the next
program you've got in mind to write? And which language to you
generally use for this purpose?


================================

Paul, what makes you think I do a great job? Nobody ever tells me. It's not
just idle curiosity. I'm not fishing. Feedback needed.

I always have several programs on the go at any point in time. Some have
lasted, on and off, for years. But little to do with complexity. More to
do with reliability and freedom from bugs.

I have an unfinished program which calculates the L and C values of a
parallel tuned circuit. It can be connected in an antenna wire to resonate
it to two frequencies. It is not a trap. The circuit's resonant frequency
doesn't matter very much. But on the low side of resonance it behaves as an
inductive loading coil and on the high side it behaves as a capacitance
load. The antenna becomes resonant at one frequency below the wire's natural
frequency, and at another frequency above the wire's natural frequency.

Unlike use of a trap, at both frequencies the wire radiates over the whole
of its length. Furthermore, at its lower resonant frequency, the wire is
shorter than a 1/4-wavelength.

I do not claim to have invented the arrangement. It has been previously
discussed on a newsgroup. But I doubt if the L and C values have been
explicitly calculated before.

I hesitate at making the program available to all and sundry for ever more,
because I am unable to erect an actual antenna to prove the calculations
correct. Although I am reasonably confident they are correct.

I use Pascal source code. Its an old language and you can't teach an old dog
new tricks. But programming languages have settled down. There's little
further room for improvement. I like Pascal because it is disciplined and
structured. There's no such thing as a "Go-to" command as with BASIC. The
compiler won't allow you to make logical mistakes. The quality of a program,
the finished working product, doesn't have much to do with the language
used. Chinese is just as good as English.
----
Reg, G4FGQ


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Old August 17th 04, 12:56 AM
Paul Burridge
 
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On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 21:42:56 +0000 (UTC), "Reg Edwards"
wrote:

Paul wrote -
Well you're doin' a great job, Reg. Keep it up! What's the next
program you've got in mind to write? And which language to you
generally use for this purpose?


================================

Paul, what makes you think I do a great job? Nobody ever tells me. It's not
just idle curiosity. I'm not fishing. Feedback needed.


You make a worthwhile overall net contribution to the hobby, Reg. Your
programs save untold people an awful lot of time and f*cking about
with the kind of calculations that typically invite careless errors
and torn-out hair. I regularly visit your site and grab what I can!
Anyone with any sense would!
Will that suffice? ;-)
--

"What is now proved was once only imagin'd." - William Blake, 1793.
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Old August 19th 04, 12:04 AM
Reg Edwards
 
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"Paul Burridge" wrote -
I regularly visit your site and grab what I can!
Anyone with any sense would!
Will that suffice? ;-)


===========================

Well, it will have to do. Thanks Paul!

For the last one or two years of my varied career I was listed in the firm's
phone directory as "Chief Standards Engineer". I had under some sort of
control the Quality Managers of 3 factories and laboratories.

Strictly speaking, "Quality" is defined as the ability to conform to
specified requirements. It can be statistically measured as can anybody's
performance.

But in my case I would prefer the more lax and broader definition of Quality
: The ability to serve the intended purpose.

"Reliability" is defined as Quality versus Time.

My programs, produced in retirement for a variety of reasons and purposes,
have now been available to the 'rabble' for 5 or 6 years. ;o)

Here I go again - pouring out my heart with the aid of a bottle of Valencia
red. It's supposed to be good for the arteries. It didn't do Franco any
harm. But a pity about Guenica as depicted by Pablo Picasso. He should
have done Nagosaki (which I witnessed from the air) and Hiroshima (which I
visited on foot). Unfortunately my camera had a pin-hole in the bellows but
the experience, nevertheless, profoundly influenced, you could say biassed,
my early education.
---
Reg, G4FGQ


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Old August 16th 04, 11:57 PM
Ken Scharf
 
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Paul Burridge wrote:
On Mon, 16 Aug 2004 00:37:32 +0000 (UTC), "Reg Edwards"
wrote:


Being in the Far East, the anti-radar defence rumour, spread by the Germans,
that exposure to radar beams caused sterilisation to radar mechanics had not
reached me.

Anyway, as my wife at intervals some years later allowed me to think, I
eventually became the father of 5 children.



Perhaps you shoulda stood a bit closer to the waveguides, Reg. You'd
have been rich by now without all those kids. Plus you might even have
grown an extra brain. ;-)

Hey there was this radar tech in the army who used to sit near the
big dish in the winter to keep warm. One day they increased the
radar transmitter power 10 fold but this tech wasn't informed.

Let's just say he won the 'Darwin' award for a job 'well done'
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Old August 16th 04, 04:06 AM
Reg Edwards
 
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The time was 1952 or 1953. I had a roving job. Indeed I've nearly always
had a roving job. You meet people.

The place was Gretna Green, just a few hundred yards from the well-known
black-smith's forge and its famous marriage-ceremony anvil.

I was working with a colleage in a normally unstaffed telephone repeater
station. The job was capacitance-rebalancing of the multi-pair trunk carrier
cables which ran through the place.

The test leads were very flexible twin-screened cables which kept getting in
the way of the portable test equipment, on a collapsible table, and the two
operators. Difficult to read the dB meters.

So to ease the accommodation problem the test cables were tossed up and over
a pair of substantial bars, up near the ceiling, which could have been part
of the station's equipment racks.

Unfortunately, the insulation over the screening braid was worn at one point
and the bars turned out to be the main copper 50-volt bus-bars from the
battery room. Work continued in silence until suddenly there was a loud
bang, like a cannon shot.

The main fuse from the station's batteries had blown. The station stopped
working. England was disconnected from Scotland at a time when the Cold War
had started.

There was a glass-fronted fusebox containing a lot of cardboard-cased fuses.
The idea was for fuses which had blown to indicate themselves by charred
cardboard. But none were indicated although spare fuses were available. One
catastophy after another. But in any case neither my colleage or I was
familiar with station maintenance procedures.

We had visions of severe disciplinery action being taken. And I had brought
with me a set of fishing rods. Indeed, I had obtained after much arguing
temporary exclusive membership of Gretna Green fishing club at the then
extortionate fee of 2 shillings and sixpence.

But then our luck changed. 10 minutes later the local maintenance man walked
in. Purely by chance he had come in to make himself a cup of tea (facilities
were available) whereas he should have been doing something else in the
English town of Carlisle, 12 miles away. We were of senior rank. He fixed
the fuse and we never heard any more about the serious incident.

In the evenings I went fishing for trout by bright moonlight while my
colleage, a much older fellow than I, took my wife (who had come to join me
for a week) to the local Gretna cinema. He bought her icecream in the back
row. And I made friends with the female cook at the hotel and had trout and
butter for the first course at breakfast.

The next few jobs took me further into the wilds of Bonnie Scotland where
there was nothing to do except to gamble and play cards in the evenings. I
always lost. Even to the extent of losing my ex-army camp bed and having to
sleep on the hard wooden blocks of the repeater station floor. Myxamatosis
raged amongst the poor Scottish rabbit population.

It is only relatively recently, in my old age, have I returned to such happy
days. I have just opened a bottle of Sierra Valley, Californian white wine
for a night-cap. Diplomatic relations are now back to normal. I expect no
more irritable invitations to tea parties in Boston.
----
Yours, Reg, G4FGQ




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