Electronics Introduction
Electronics has always been a hobby for me, and it became my carear. I served a traditional apprenticship in the marine navigation industry. This involved all sorts of skills, ranging from electronic design to some mechanical work. In those days metal wave guide was the way Radar systems transmitted the mucrowaves about. Given todays ultra high performance microwave systems, such as satallite TV, it's hard to belive that Radar at that time was still using crystal set type receivers.
A simple diode was inserted into a wave guide mixer, usually with a klystron oscillator or maybe (the very modern for the time) gunn-diode oscillator on one port of the mixer, and the antenna on the other. The diode acted as a non linear detector, and you got the mixing product of the two signals out of it. This was used as the IF frequency, and all amplification was done at that frequency - all in the 30-60 Mhz range
I spent a few years at the BBC designs department. That was when I first started working on communications systems, as well as remote control systems.
A long stint at the Metropolitian Police followed, where I ended up as the Data communications Manager. I oversaw the installation of the first ethernet networks for the MPS. I've poked through the basements of dozens and dozens of police stations, I never found any bodies :-) but I did find a "lost" blue lanp. It was a replacement for the main lamp outside the building, but during an visit by some digentary or other, it had got "tidied up" and was never seen again until I unearthed it in a basement cable riser cupboard. After a few visits I was able to catorgrise a building as easy, awkward, hard, and impossible when it came to installing a network.
After the MPS I joined a data provision company, I was an engineer again! lots of big computers and a datacentre to play in. The fun did not last long, I ended up as the manager there! So back to staff reports, finances, and such like. After the big stock market crash I moved to a small ISP and spent a few years there on the front line.
I've now pretty much wound down to retirement - so electronics is back to being my hobby again.
