Link: TUNE IN
For me it was a tad of good luck rather than design because for my 7th birthday my parents brought me a pair of Walkie-Talkies these weren't the run of the mill 27meg
1.mW jobbies, My father worked for AEI who became GEC in latter years, they often had sales reps calling promoting all sorts of transistor devices and gadgets and on this occasion leading up to my birthday they had two-way radios lucky for me my father had no idea these needed type approved licensing etc. they claimed to be 500Mw
and probably weren't far short, they were on 53.00 MHz it just so happened that 53.25 MHz was the spot frequency of channel "3" in the UK or position 3 on all the then vhf TV's and was totally clear in London and as you probably remember the sound was variable via the outer ring of the channel changer I believe it was plus and minus virtually half a meg and could be easily tuned to the spot frequency of the walkie-talkies ie 53.00 MHz. Originally I found this out by pure chance IE their being the same frequency.Fortunately they were Amplitude Modulation as were those old TV sets we all had. Didn't take me long to start playing and soon found I could modulate them via an audio lead from the record players record socket going through an old Eagle 4 channel mixer soldered to the Mike input via a dropper all very crude but actually sounded great in fact it sounded as good as anything ells when playing music.
Luckily for me we lived in a 5 floored house plus an attic so by fully extending the almost two meter telescopic antenna it was virtually totally clear of any roof tops and so leaving an LP playing I went walking armed with my trusty old Zenith (Trans-Oceanic) portable radio which covered said frequency via AM so I found it had a total of just under half a mile fringe, but within a 1/4 of a mile it was a solid signal at ground level and fully Omni directional from the TX. So being as we all had rooftop TV antennas it was obviously even better but to this day I don't truly know just how far it got via rooftop receiving antennas possibly double or just slightly better than on my old Zenith (Trans-Oceanic) portable radio at ground level. Anyway about 6 weeks in I had all the local kids tuning in each Sunday afternoon on their TV's they would bombard me with requests its a good job I had virtually the whole top 40 covering approximately 3 years from 58 to 61 used to buy them at jumble sales gee who remembers them I suppose the forerunner of the boot sale. Anyway that's what kicked me into the world of pirate radio! All that followed is readable / available on
https://garrystevens.vze.com/ and of course those that know me personally know what I'm up to today.........
Right over to you guys, what and when was your beginning to be an anorak and or your first transmitter.
Best Regards
Garry Stevens😉
