Oral History of Defence Electronics

R G Wells: Receiving the signal. Finally, the valve; we joined the valve by winding the clean little bee wire around it and then plugging it with any insulating material we could get to make it stick, - no valve holder, of course. So eventually we produced a receiver of sorts, except it wouldn't oscillate. We tried building more, another choke coil, and this went on for ages; there was no possibility we could get this valve to oscillate. I think it's recommended according to a friend of mine who had an amateur licence, he thought that about 120 volts was the best we could get and there was no way we could get that by trying to smooth this any more. So the only avenue open was to bribe one Chinese working at the power station who was very much our way, and of course in those days was a nationalist Chinese. The capital of China in those days was Chungking, and I told him we could get him some overseas news from Chungking if he would slowly wind his field coil power up on the generator every night starting at about 9 o'clock bit by bit, and get it up to about 130 on his meter. He understood, and after that I said half an hour to drop it again, very quietly and slowly because it may affect the lights "....and you no speak about that because you get chopped, you know, and we will give you Chungking news...." This was duly done and for about six months we had reliable communication. The first trial on air had too much hum, and we had to modify a few things two or three times in attempts to get it right, and in the end we had a workable situation which was worth exploring. Capacitors right, choke coils right, one head phone, we had some old rag so we tied it round the head and tied it on, or string, or whatever we could get. With the hope of recording something we took some paper, which wasn't in plentiful supply, but the odd piece of paper we could get. Running notches down the left hand side, about a quarter to a half inch apart down the paper, and bending it over so that these little pieces stuck up in the air, and in the pitch darkness one could then put the headphones over one's head with eyes looking out for possible interruption by the Japanese - we had some lookouts, or cockatoos as the Australians called them, around the place to warn us at the oncoming of the Japanese - and with great trepidation we heard Big Ben chiming one night. Of course only one of us heard it but we were so full of enthusiasm. It was the BBC all right; it was quite a clear signal but it was somebody talking about growing hops in Kent. This broadcast went on for something like three quarters of an hour without any interruption, but ultimately the signal faded out and I was very annoyed. I was asked the next morning by my senior officer what was the news, and I said "we've got good news; I can't talk here, come this way." So he came along and said "what's this news you're talking about." I said I didn't actually hear any news, and he became very annoyed with me and said what the hell did I mean, and I said "if the British primary producing experts are capable and able to spare the time to talk about growing hops in Kent, Britain must still be alive and floating with their thumbs up, and as far as I'm concerned that's the best news I could hear!"

Back to contents page.| Back| Forwards