1913-1983
Whilst still at school and not yet 18, he managed to persuade the Postmaster General to grant him a licence (dated 17 September 1930) to establish a 'wireless receiving station and to use wireless sending apparatus." He was thus one of the earliest "Ham " radio enthusiasts and was allocated the call sign 2AWA which later became G2AWA.
In October 1945 he re-applied to the GPO for a licence to transmit and for the return of his radio equipment which was impounded at the outbreak of war. Soon afterwards a great deal of Government Surplus equipment came onto the market and one enterprising local busisnessman, Thomas Best sold him many pieces of equipment which were used to build a very handsome transmitter. This was manufactured and housed in the downstairs back room which throughout the war had been the home of our air raid shelter. With this transmitter Sandy (G2AWA) and later his wife Margaret (G3HYL) conversed with all and sundry in many parts of the world, often well into the small hours of the morning.
The E52b shown on this site was one of the few items of my father's radio equipment that I did not dispose of when he died. I remember it (probably in 1944) originally in a captured German radio vehicle at Foxhill which was one of the Admiralty establishments which were set up in Bath in 1940. This vehicle and its contents were presumably examined by the Admiralty for whom my father worked. After the war the equipment was no longer needed and he acquired it together with the telescopic aerial mast, electric foot-warmers, first-aid boxes and some teleprinter equipment. We used the foot-warmers to bring up one-day old chicks. The first-aid boxes, being water-tight were used when we went camping to store margarine etc. to keep out the ants! The aerial mast supported his ham-radio aerial (80 metres). These pictures taken in 1952 shows his 80 metre transmitter, several power supplies, a CR100 receiver, the E52b, the STC 4021 microphone and the small Admiralty speaker.
After his death in 1983, the collection (two tons!) of World War 2 radio parts that he amassed over the years were collected by Dr GE Winbolt in Bristol. The radio transmitters and various communications receivers together with log books and QSL cards were transported to the Wireless Museum in the Isle of Wight. When my wife and I visited Mr D Byrne in Ryde, IOW in 1987 the equipment was seen but had not been put to work.
Following the clearance of the national wireless museum on the IOW, Sean Williams attended an auction in the Midlands of "surplus stock" from that source. Amongst the items purchased was a box of about 150 QSL Cards and other documentation that belonged to my late Father. By searching on the internet he found this page and kindly returned the box to me. I have scanned a few of these which are shown here. As for the Museum, he told me some rather sad news - It would appear that the curator (Mr. D Byrne) is in rather ill health, and has taken residence in a nursing home, but before doing this he instructed some associates to form a trust to preserve the collection. It would appear that the new trustees have decimated the collection for some reason, with the auction Sean attended being the beginning of the end.
