Rolls Royce Amateur Radio Club

[PanBiker]

As the club was quite popular in the 80's and 90's I thought I would put this thread up to show what we got up to. This first photo is quite a few but not all the members at the time assembled in front of the Cricket Pavilion on The RR Sports Ground. The club radio shack was in a former Bowling Pavilion behind here which was made available to the members. A lot of these folk are now deceased some are still around. The photo is probably sometime in the early to mid 80's.

[Stanley]

Any women members?

[PanBiker]

Not on this photo but we had a few over the years. There are about 35 on this photo, our membership was around 50 to 60 at the peak I reckon.

[PanBiker]

Early Beginnings

I think it was early 1978 when our Pearl Insurance man Eric started to encourage me to take my Radio Amateurs Exam. At the time I only knew of two radio amateurs in the town. Eric Cockerill was one and Joe Tyas was the other. Joe lived at the top of mum and dads street and was always blamed for every bit of atmospheric disturbance on the VHF TV Bands whenever that should occur even if due to adverse tropospheric conditions! I was always interested in electronics and as a young lad of 11 or 12 I had an old multi band valved receiver in my bedroom it had about 5 SW bands.

I used to go up to Joe's to marvel at the radio kit he had in the attic. He started to teach me Morse in weekly sessions. Joe was a radio operator in the RAF during the war, I think on bombers. He very rarely used telephony, all his contacts were made using CW, (morse), a lot of his equipment was government surplus. Joe could hold a conversation with you at the same time as sending practice code and keeping an ear on the traffic on the bands, often pausing for a while to have quick exchange with another station somewhere in the world. All fascinating stuff but that early dalliance into radio was brought to an end when I discovered girls.

Roll the clock on to 1979 and Eric who called each month to collect our insurance premiums. Eric was a former signaller during the war and an amputee having lost his right hand after being wounded during the fall of Singapore in 1942. He was captured by the Japanese and spent the next three and a half years in Changi Prison. He was put to work in the kitchen by his captors and had no contact with his parents until after liberation. This was eventually reported in the local paper. I came across the information much later when I was researching for missing service personnel from our war memorial.

Anyway, I was 26 at the time and a fully qualified electronics engineer. Married and with our first child on the way. Eric figured that the exam should only be formality so I got a copy of the RAE exam manual and read it through a couple of times. I took my City & Guilds RAE paper at Nelson and Colne College as an external candidate. I was on my own on a desk at the front with a load of young lassies doing hairdressing qualifications. I think I got the pass result in August so I sent off my pass slip and the fee to the Home Office for my licence. Our daughter Carla was born in September so had other things on my mind.

Passing the RAE exam gave you access to a Class B amateur radio licence at the time and I was allocated the callsign G8UKC for my station.The licence allowed access to the VHF 144MHz band (2M) and higher frequency allocations above. I didn't have any radio equipment at all at that time and although I had my licence, learning to be a new dad came first.

I think it was late spring the following year that Eric informed me that there was going to be an informal meeting of local radio amateurs and SWL's down at Rolls Royce Sports and Social club and asked I would be attending. The date was cleared with Sally and a small group of maybe half a dozen as well as myself met for the first time in the Merlin suite. I only knew Eric and Joe but was introduced to Les Logan and David Woods. Les was a retired employee of Rolls and David was still employed by the company. I think Ronnie Cowgill was there as well another employee and interested party. We all chatted over a couple of beers and it was mooted that it might be a good idea to start a radio club in the town. There were quite a few more amateurs and SWL's in the town unknown to me, all doing their own thing in spare bedrooms attics and sheds. There was a potential membership there so why not? The Rolls employees and former employees would approach the management and see if we could establish it as another section of the Sports and Social club. We agreed to meet again after that meeting and make further decisions on how to proceed.

[Stanley]

Keep going Ian, specialised but still essential social history.

[PanBiker]

When I took my RAE in the late 70's it was still a City and Guilds written paper. It was in two parts. There were ten questions in total. Two in the first part which were compulsory and eight in the second part of which you had to answer any six of your own choice. It was a 3 hour exam and you had to to have a pass in all questions answered. Failure of any question was an overall fail of the paper.

For anyone interested here is the syllabus from a 1969 paper and an actual examination paper from 1968. My exam followed the same format. It was replaced in the early 80's with a multiple choice format exam. This did lead to a lot more people taking the exam as it was seen as easier. A lot came from the CB fraternity as the AR licence offered a lot more opportunity and scope for operating and experimentation.

Radio-Amateur-Examination-Syllabus_1969.pdf

Radio-Amateur-Examination-December_1968.pdf

[Tripps]

Interesting. How's the overall membership holding up these days? I'd guess it has fallen as computing grows, and the sense of wonderment of communication at a distance dies away. It's just normal nowadays.

This chap was my boss for a number of years. Alan Betts

[PanBiker]

Back to the club. We met again a month later and there were a few more folk present this time. I think Eric brought his mate Eddy over from Earby. Eddy held the callsign G4GIZ and Eric's station was G4GOZ, collectively known as Giz and Goz. David brought another couple from over Nelson way where he lived.

The Rolls workers and ex employees reported that they had been to see the management and put forward the idea of forming a club. Les and Dave were instrumental in this and I think Les dropped into the conversation that we would ultimately like to have some kind of accommodation within the sports complex. They also reported that company policy stated that the major roles on sub committees for the various social club groups had to be made up of Rolls employees or ex employees of the firm. We decided the next step would be to form a committee to show good intent to the management. Dave Woods was nominated as Chairperson and Les was appointed as Secretary for the group. Les held quite bit of sway with the social club management as he was heavily involved with the Bowling section. He had also won lots of trophies for the Rolls bowling teams. His lovely wife Doris was also a keen bowler. There was a Crown Green at the social club site and there still is but the one behind the pavilion on the sports field has now been removed. The Bowling section as it panned out would play a major part in the formation and assets of the club. Les was a shed man as well Stanley, he had a wooden garage at the side of the house on Fenton Avenue with his lathe and the rest of his engineering kit in. Although we had no monitory assets we lived in hopes and appointed a treasurer as well but I can't remember who that was.

[PanBiker]

Interesting. How's the overall membership holding up these days? I'd guess it has fallen as computing grows, and the sense of wonderment of communication at a distance dies away. It's just normal nowadays.

This chap was my boss for a number of years. Alan Betts

Late 2017 it was over 80,000 and increase over the previous 5 years of 10%. Current statistics should be on your previous employers website David. I will have poke about and report back. As an active station at the moment I would say that the numbers are probably around the same but band usage has changed dramatically since I was first licensed. Particularly on the VHF bands.

[PanBiker]

Right, this is from Ofcoms annual report for 2018/19 and from the Category A Spectrum Licensing section.

Amateur & Maritime licenses issued: 258,821 an increase from the previous year when it was 249,723

For some reason Ofcom combine Amateur & Marine licences. There wont be 258,00 amateurs but neither can I see there being 178,00 or thereabouts marine licences. I reckon 80,000 to 100,000 radio amateurs would be about right. There was a surge when the Morse requirement was dropped for the A class licence and another when the licence was split into the Novice, Intermediate and Full categories. All nowadays of course give access to most of the allocated spectrum it is only the radiated power levels allowed in each category that varies.

annual-report-18-19.pdf

[PanBiker]

Actually, I have been thinking about why the amateur and marine licences are counted together. I wonder if it is due to the fact that some of the amateur HF band allocations historically used to have part of their spectrum's shared with the maritime service? That was the main reason originally to retain a Morse qualification to hold a class A amateur licence. On a shared band you had to be able to recognise a vessel in distress which would always be signalled in Morse. Part of the licence conditions were that if received you were obliged to relay the information to the Coast Guard or other maritime rescue services.

I can't see any reason for counting them together nowadays as that particular caveat has been removed.

That led me to find this from the RNLI which gives the various methods of emergency calling and the equipment required.

How to Call for Help at Sea

[Stanley]

[PanBiker]

I can see this thread going off tack quite often as long as Mr Trippier keeps me on my toes.

No worries, the licence is granted for "self-training of the Licensee in communication by wireless telegraphy". Revisiting old and new methods used is part of the ongoing learning.

Worth noting as well in that it is the only hobby governed by International Treaty.

[PanBiker]

Once the committee had been formed things moved on at quite a pace. We still met monthly at the Social Club with a few more turning up each time as the news spread about the new club. With insider information of the usage of the buildings on the sports field Les made a pitch for us to take over use of the former bowling pavilion which was behind and at right angles to the cricket pavilion. Bowling matches had moved predominantly to the green down by the Social Club and the one on the sports field was only used for practice or the odd friendly game.

Management first offered us accommodation in some of the remaining former accommodation blocks on the Social Club site. Les was fully aware of the limitations that these would provide as he and Doris had occupied one of the units for the duration of the war when they were originally built. Les was sent down to Barlick from the North East as a reserved engineer by the Ministry of Works when the shadow factories were being set up. Doris followed him down once the accommodation was secured. The individual units were concrete prefabs and quite small. They each offered a small living area with cooking facilities and heating, a toilet and an adjacent bedroom. Les showed me the one that he and Doris occupied, they lived there until Coates Estate was built. Hostel users were offered first refusal on the houses on the new council estate as they became available. Les and Doris moved into Fenton Avenue

Non starter as far as Les was concerned so he stuck out for the old bowling pavilion, pointing out that it was currently just used for storing junk. Happily they saw the point and we got the keys. The quadrant behind the two pavilions had a boiler house that provided heating for the block. We set about clearing the hut and got help with removing the rubbish with transport from the factory. By the Summer of 1980 we had installed benching at one end as an operating position for equipment that we hoped to acquire. Works electricians rewired the building for us with power to the benching they provided an isolation transformer and master kill switch arrangements. We took delivery of some surplus tables and chairs that had been replaced in the works canteen and set these up down the centre of the room. We were becoming established.

[Whyperion]

Interesting. How's the overall membership holding up these days? I'd guess it has fallen as computing grows, and the sense of wonderment of communication at a distance dies away. It's just normal nowadays.

This chap was my boss for a number of years. Alan Betts

Late 2017 it was over 80,000 and increase over the previous 5 years of 10%. Current statistics should be on your previous employers website David. I will have poke about and report back. As an active station at the moment I would say that the numbers are probably around the same but band usage has changed dramatically since I was first licensed. Particularly on the VHF bands.

I think quite a few (maybe more in Australia) talk about their AM adventures on YouTube, so its a combination of old and new communications for some folk.

[Stanley]

It's going well Ian....

[Big Kev]

A nice bit of social history Ian, I'm enjoying the read.

[PanBiker]

Thanks, next episode then:

Because of the two tier licensing regime that had been introduced in the mid 1960's, there were quite a few class B licensees that wanted to progress to the HF bands. This required the licensee to attain a recognised proficiency in the sending and receiving of Morse Code, (reasoning above). The requirement was to be able to copy plain text and numbers at a minimum of 12 words per minute. It was one of the firsts requests from the members and one that could be organised quite easily.

I have already mentioned Joe Tyas (G3NSG) George 3, Nan, Sugar, George as he used to sign having learnt his code in the military and before the advent of the ITU phonetic alphabet that was now in more common use. Golf 3 November, Siera, Golf. A minor matter either would be accepted and recognised on the bands. The other volunteer for tutor was John York (G3KJY) who had also learnt his code in the RAF but made the leap to the later nomenclature, Golf 3 Kilo, Juliet, Yankee. We had two tutors and it was set up to have weekly training sessions for whoever wanted to gain the proficiency. An Admiralty pattern British Navy (NATO) key was provided I think by Les who had picked one up at a rally. John knocked a simple practice oscillator up using a 555 timer chip, shoved it in a box with a speaker and the following week the classes commenced.

John and Joe ran alternate weeks but would both give extra instruction if they were down at the club shack and anyone asked. I tipped up for the first session as did about 3 more. Word spread that the club was offering Morse classes and that led to a surge in the membership. The RSGB (Radio Society of Great Britain) provided, (and still do) on air Morse practice sessions both of random groups, numbers and plain text but it is only for receiving, there is no option to develop your own skills with the key under supervision. That was the beauty of having two professional operators. Both taught the way they had been taught and it was the main recognised method at the time and relied on learning the alphabet and the numbers 0 to 9 at a relatively slow speed, 5wpm. The initial problem for a learner is that you need time to write it down. As proficiency increased with each cohort the speed would be increased this continued until you could recognise all the characters at about 8wpm. You then moved on to random 5 figure letter groups, five digit number groups were chucked in for good measure. The key was passed around at each session for each candidate to demonstrate their "fist" When everyone could send and receive the random groups at the current speed plain text was introduced and practised until everyone had it off pat.

Everyone can send faster than they can receive especially if sending from pre written text. This is because reading is an unconscious act all yo have to do is change it to the rhythm you know what the next letter or word is, half the job is done. Receiving is a different kettle entirely as you never know what character you are going to get next so it takes longer to decipher.

One of the pitfalls that you can fall into is anticipation of words and if you get it wrong it can throw your concentration and you miss the next couple of words. Consider the word "the" that can indeed be just that or it could be "then", "there" or even "their" or "themselves". Morse is a rhythm of individual characters linked by specific time periods, each of the individual characters themselves are timed in their execution. Here are the rules, we used dit's and dah's rather than dots and dashes.

Here are the timings. Three dit's are equal to one dah, each letter of a word is spaced by one dah, words are spaced by seven dit's. All the letters of the alphabet are from one to four characters long, each numerical digit is five characters in length. Numbers are the easiest to learn as they are all a logical straight progression of characters. 1 = dit, dah,dah,dah,dah - 2 = dit, dit, dah, dah, dah - 3 = dit, dit , dit, dah, dah - this pattern continues up to five which is five dits then it reverses, 6 = dah, dit, dit, dit, dit - 7 = dah, dah, dit, dit, dit same progression up to 0 which is five dahs. Notice that the zero comes after the nine and not before the one.

Morse Code Timing

On the site above if you go onto the "translator" tab you can input plain text which it will display Morse code. Switch your speakers on and you can play it back to see what it sounds like.

Joe used a trick to stop you anticipating, he would often space an extra dit after the e in "the" not enough to be recognised as a letter space, then add the extra letters on the end. That was enough to trip you up and make you miss the next word. All operators develop their own "fist" with minor timing foibles etc. Experienced operators can recognise an individual from this much like you could recognise someone by dialect or how they made certain pronunciations.

Takes a bit of getting your head round written down as the Morse language is just a rhythm. This is also what makes it a very powerful method of communication. You can tap it out on a key, beat it on a drum or pipe, signal it with a flashlight. The limiting factor as your speed increases is that you cant write fast enough to copy it to paper. You can type it of course which is how commercial operators used to copy, but that is another skill on top of what is going on in your head deciphering the rhythm. Fully proficient operators hear the rhythm directly as language much like being fluent in a foreign tongue. I never reached that stage but got comfortably to about 15wpm.

[Stanley]

Again, interesting.... More to it than meets the ear.

[PanBiker]

Indeed, as I said CW is what you might call a lowest denominator method of communication. You can copy it way way down in the noise of a weak signal. Communication can be made when AM or SSB telephony would fail.

Back at the club it's 1980 and we have a shack with light and heating, benching for equipment, tables and chairs, we added some shelving at the other end for donated books and started a bit of a free lending library for amateur radio periodicals and info.

Next step was to get some antennas installed and Les had heard on one of the local nets of the widow of a radio amateur up near Ilkley who had a bit of a problem with disposing of the remains of her late husbands station. Otley Radio Club where he had been a long standing member had helped her with selling on the majority of his radio equipment. She was left with a 45 ft lattice tower with a hand winched 20 ft extension pole. This was installed at the back of the detached property where they lived, I think it was somewhere around Ben Rhydding. She needed shut of it as she was selling the house and moving to live nearer their daughter I think it was.

The tower was free to anyone that could make use of it as long as they saw to its removal. We arranged for a scouting party to go out one evening and have a look at the rabbit so to speak and what we would need for disassembly and transport. I was a lot fitter then in my late 20's and a climbing monkey when required. I think it was Les, John, Ronnie and myself who made the trip to have a look. John came as he worked in the drawing office and we knew that the management would want to see scale plans of any developments we wanted on the Sports complex so John went equipped with the means to do some measuring up, I think we took Les's 66ft bowling tape.

The mast was of lattice construction and was in three 15 foot sections the chain driven winch was installed on a platform at the 30ft junction with a winding handle fixed in the bottom section. The extension pole ran through a roller bearing at the top of the 45ft lattice, all steel cable and pulley driven. Otley club had removed the antennas previously and seen to their sale. Each of the 15ft sections were bolted together. It didn't look like a commercially built tower, probably scratch built like big a Meccano model. It was a tapered design, utilising angle iron for the vertical sides and at each horizontal junction point, the base was about 6ft square tapering to 4ft square at 15ft, second section tapered to about 2ft square, the top section was about 18in square at the top. the 20ft pole winched to about 15ft above giving a total height of 60ft for the antennas. I think Otley Club said that they had removed a tri-band HF beam antenna and a vertical 2M antenna which was mounted on top. We couldn't see how any electrical rotator could have been mounted in that arrangement and we thought that the beam was probably parked in best orientation for interest as required. We knew that it would probably be a day of a job to pull it apart and we would need more than one climber and some light block and tackle and an extension ladder for a third hand. Les arranged a date for removal for the following weekend.

The following week we went up with Geoff Peels Land rover for which he had a 20 ft trailer. Ladder and kit etc. I think it was Bill Standing, one of our Nelson members who assisted on the climbing, he had worked as an aerial rigger at one time and was about the same age as me. Lady of the house had made us all a brew when we arrived she was glad that the tower was going to get as second life with our club, she would not accept any remuneration.

We removed all the winching cable first, then the winch, we left the bolted in platform as it still gave rigidity to the structure. Once the winch was out of the way we could drop and remove the pole down through the centre. The tower had been painted in black Hammerite and some of the nuts and bolts needed whacking with a hammer to get them loose. Only four at each level fortunately. When we took the top section off we were surprised at how light it actually was 1" mild steel strapping had been used for the lattice. With one on either side of the tower and another working from the ladder it was quite easy to get the section down and onto the trailer. Winch platform out next and then the middle section, wider but no more onerous in removal. That just left the bottom section which was fastened to the concrete base by four heavy rawlbolts. All sorted on the Saturday afternoon. We gave thanks to the lady and received more in return from her. We brought it back down to the sports field and chained it up in bits to the verandah rail outside the shack

We had decided that the best position for it would be at the side of the boiler house behind the shack. It would be relatively easy to get any cable runs into the building. John had all his measurements for the tower so a quick measure up of the other buildings on the site allowed him to produce working drawings and elevations of what we were proposing. Les and Dave took these to the management who took one look and said that it was too big! Back to the drawing board. We settled on the bottom two sections which would give us 30ft of elevation, we proposed a rotator platform about 5 foot from the top with a 20ft pole giving us a height of 45ft maximum. That would give us 15ft of mounting space for antennas. Management were happy with this and the second draft of drawings. In typical Rolls fashion though they insisted on proper foundations as the intended installation position only had a tarmac topping. So we had to install a concrete base for the structure. Les manufactured some threaded studs welded to base plates which were set into the concrete at the required positions for the base section. I use the royal we actually as they sent a couple of lads from the factory who dug a nice neat square hole and mixed and poured the footings for us, a proper job with re-bar reinforcements, we got them to shove a copper earth spike in at the same time so we could ground the installation. The factory took on the job of shot blasting the two sections we were going to use and they resprayed it in green. One of the advantages of having a world class engineering firm behind projects.

[Big Kev]

RR were very accommodating, I can't see many places offering the same amount of support now.

[PanBiker]

Indeed not Kev.

I think when we formed the club we got a grant from the Sports Club, (Welfare) side of the operation as a start up fund. The Sports Club sections were seen as very important to the welfare of the workforce. Rolls Royce used to hold an annual sports day for a long time. That has all gone now with the downsizing of the business.

I think we had a collection at the early meetings for club funds and then settled on an annual membership subscription. I can't remember for the life in me how much it was though for membership.

We still also had social meetings in the Merlin Suite and often had a raffle with donated prizes to raise funds. Later on we had bigger events to raise funds.

[Stanley]

Good stuff Ian.... Keep going...

[PanBiker]

It was late Autumn I think and we decided to get the tower installed before the onset of winter. The footings had hardened and the studs were correctly set for the four corners of the bottom section. Factory had welded some new corner plates on the base section and drilled them out for us before it was sprayed up so it was just a drop in job for the bottom section onto the 1" studs, washers and double nuts and bottom section was installed. A 1" copper ribbon was bolted on one of the legs at the bottom and fastened off to the earth spike already installed. Tony Whittingham was a Barlick lad now living over in the Ribble Valley he was a technical manager for Post Office telephones (I think it might have been British Telecom by then) and also a licensed radio amateur, he lent us a couple of GPO climbing harnesses so that we could work safely as we worked our way up the structure. Les had manufactured an aluminium rotator platform which was bolted in below the top of the next section. As it was tapered design of tower we could secure a couple of ladders to the bottom section which allowed us to get above the top of the base section. A third ladder was used to slide the next section up far enough so that it could be manhandled into place and bolted down.

The top of the second section had been fitted with a top plate with a through bearing for a 2" pole. There was a corresponding hole in the rotator base plate which was set about 25ft up to allow the pole to be inserted from the bottom and pushed up through the bearing before the rotator was put in position. We had purchased a heavy duty rotator, (I think it was a Yamaha) these are designed to be plate mounted and have a thrust bearing in the rotator top housing. We had already drilled the mounting holes in the plate for this. It needed a five core cable to provide the drive current and rotator control signals. We could make these connections on the ground before installation. We drilled an access hole for cables through into the boiler house and put a length of plastic pipe in for cable entry. All cables were routed through here and then exited through the back wall into the shack, we had a similar arrangement organised there for cable entry. Rotator control box was set up on the bench and we tested the installation which was then pronounced fit for antenna installation. We had spent the cash on the rotator so we couldn't afford any antennas for the tower straight away but it was ready and waiting for when we could.

So that we could have some operation from the club shack we decided to install a wire antenna as we now had a support at the shack end and and we had identified a redundant telegraph pole out near the gate that would serve to anchor the other end. That would be a relatively cheap option but it would mean that folk could bring their own HF gear and operate it from the shack if they wanted. On closer inspection of the site someone suggested that they had seen a tree up on the banking behind and between the bowling green and the football field that might also be a useful anchor point. We measured up and found that we had 200ft from the tower to the gate to play with and going the other way even more at 375ft to the tree from the tower, lots of scope for wire installations. The simplest was a 200ft long wire out to the gate so we installed that as a first deployment. We used hard drawn copper wire and had to use a ratchet winch to pull the wire to tension. It had heavy duty insulators at each end and then would normally have polypropylene rope to fasten it back but at 200ft long we couldn't tension it sufficiently to get the sag out over the car park without the rope breaking. What we settled on was aerial riggers lashing wire which we could form properly at the insulators and we used the lashing wire forming loops to create a more suitable termination that we could fix to the pole. That antenna was fine as a first deployment but I think we tried a full size G5RV multi band dipole design later. We switched back to the long wire for the lower frequency bands 160m (Top Band) 80m and 40m once we had a tri-band HF beam on the tower for 20m, 15m and 10m. Getting that up and the other antennas we deployed is another story though.

[Big Kev]

Looking forward to that story Ian.