Remember these.? All our yesterdays

[NewcastleFalcon]

Having edited slightly the old TV announcement for POTD, I went on a bit of a search and found this specialist interest, but quite unique little find, which may interest the former TV engineers on the Forum.

Contains the story of an audio tape relating to Old TV Transmission announcements/ music etc during outages or reduced power...enough to interest me as a casual observer, but plenty more I would have thought for others with more knowledge than me on such things....



Neil

[CitroJim]

We used to have something similar at our transmitting stations, except ours was in the form of a long loop of 5-unit punched tape and put into use if communications with our control stations were lost. Most unlikely as everything was duplicated in some way or another.

As I recall, it contained the station callsign followed by a number of 'Q' codes to convey the required message... This would repeat over and over.

'Q' codes were used as the message would be transmitted both as morse and each mode of machine telegraphy in use...

To my knowledge, it was never needed in 'anger'...

[Hell Razor5543]

I was passing through Ferndown on Sunday, and I saw these;

[myglaren]

We used to have something similar at our transmitting stations, except ours was in the form of a long loop of 5-unit punched tape and put into use if communications with our control stations were lost. Most unlikely as everything was duplicated in some way or another.

As I recall, it contained the station callsign followed by a number of 'Q' codes to convey the required message... This would repeat over and over.

'Q' codes were used as the message would be transmitted both as morse and each mode of machine telegraphy in use...

To my knowledge, it was never needed in 'anger'...

An odd coincidence there Jim.

I was reading just yesterday of a dad teaching his young kids the Morse code and the 'Q' codes. He was ex-military and a radio ham.
Kids had two-way radios and would practice all the time.

One day they were with him shopping and doing it out of sight of one another in the shop when a third 'voice' broke in and was asking and answering .

Turned out to be another ex-military radio operator, long retired, who was both amused and impressed with the kids ability.
They made a friend that day,

[NewcastleFalcon]

A quest.

Bring to the thread an original photo of a piece of Meccano

On a slight morse code tangent at some time or other I thought I had some sort of electrical set with a morse code tapper thing, mistakenly thinking it was part of a meccano set and was led to this....

Morse code machine 1 by Gary Higgins, on Flickr

...which led on to this, what a joy to see that green tin, the spanner and the screwdriver again, first time in decades!

Neil

[CitroJim]

An odd coincidence there Jim.

I was reading just yesterday of a dad teaching his young kids the Morse code and the 'Q' codes. He was ex-military and a radio ham.
Kids had two-way radios and would practice all the time.

One day they were with him shopping and doing it out of sight of one another in the shop when a third 'voice' broke in and was asking and answering .

Turned out to be another ex-military radio operator, long retired, who was both amused and impressed with the kids ability.
They made a friend that day,

That is utterly magical Steve

A quest.

Bring to the thread an original photo of a piece of Meccano

I can't. Unusually perhaps, as a kid I never had Meccano. Mainly because I had enough of the real thing to play with and learn on!

I do like that morse machine... It looks very much like an inker to me... It would convert the incoming morse into a representation of dots and dashes on that long thin roll of paper so it could be read at leisure...

Also, similar to how a lot of the raw traffic for Bletchley Park was recorded. Here a device known as an undulator was used to record the patterns made by the frequency-shift keying of the German 'Sawfish' (Sägefisch) radio transmissions onto paper tape for reading and transcription to 5 unit tape for onward transmission to Bletchley park via secure teleprinter and subsequent decryption by Colossus...

To have skilled operators, known and Slip Readers, interpreting the undulator output was a lot more accurate than using electronic devices to do the job. Also, the Slip Readers could cope with QRM (interference) and QSB (fading) which the early electronic decoders couldn't... They still couldn't in my early professional days, until DSP and FFT techniquies came alomg...

[MattBLancs]

Meccano - no, sorry

Washer, bracket and a square nut

Nearest in this house. My son's wooden construction stuff. Most of the wooden bolts seem to have gone AWOL at present.

This he's made, he tells me is a picture and tends to be balanced precariously around the house !

"a picture" courtesy of eldest son (4)

[NewcastleFalcon]

Nice one Matt. Someone may have a piece of meccano lying around, and those little spanners could be the most likely remnant which may be found. Failing that the quest is for an original photo of a piece of Meccano. Now those living near here I would accept a photo of this bridge...and with the quest in the sub conscious the FCF faithful may notice meccano in other places...antique shops/ auction viewings/ yes I bet the Brighton Toy museum and other such places may have some on display.

I am pretty confident the quest can be fulfilled given a little time



Neil

[mickthemaverick]

I may have some in the loft but in the meantime I found this offering on Ebay which is a replica of the set I had for Christmas as a 7 year old!!

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/355155634423 ... R_T-p_f5Yg

[mickthemaverick]

I just had a quick look in the one place other than the loft where I have some memorabilia type stuff and while there was no Meccano i did come across this gem which has special meaning at the moment!!

MTMO

MTMO

[NewcastleFalcon]

Half a Crown spent on the programme well worth it Watched the recent Bobby Charlton documentaries, from his own words and those of Franz Beckenbauer, they pretty much cancelled each other out in the final on team orders.

I am presuming you were there, and that is a personal souvenir.

On the meccano front a video I watched showed that the red and green, went on to be red and yellow in the 60's.
The set I remember was Red and Green.

Neil

[mickthemaverick]

I am presuming you were there, and that is a personal souvenir.

Neil

It is indeed a personal souvenir although we weren't at the Final. We had attended a group game where I bought the programme, the quarter final and semi final but Dad could not get any tickets for the Final so we settled down at home to watch on TV in black and white. At precisely 12 minutes to three our telly went pop!!! We had to rush round to our neighbour's to watch the game, so a memorable day for more than one reason!!

[Rp0thejester]

What a legend he was and still is in my opinion!! Even though I'm an Arsenal fan. As for the TVs thank goodness they invented Auto Tune, I hated moving the bars and readjusting the aerial

[Citroenmonamor]

The Toffo's and Yorkee.Hard enough to break teeth lol

[NewcastleFalcon]

The Toffo's and Yorkee.Hard enough to break teeth lol

I think that tells me you have started from page 1....plenty more to go...but a decent read and chip in where you can Join the latest Meccano quest

Neil