Tuesday 14 December 2021

On becoming a RAF Boy Entrant 1957 - Assesment

 I was not having a particularly special educational experience at Hardy's Grammar School, Dorchester. Having missed most of term due to glandular fever did not help, but academic I was not. Agricultural science was a great subject for me but the specialist teacher left and the subject was dropped by the school, so the end of my ambition to become a farm manager with it; Becoming a policeman was another dream, but a minimum height requirement of five foot ten inches certainly blocked that too (I maxed out at 5 ft 4in).

I think my parents realised that the RAF might offer me a career, so I set off to RAF Cosford for assessment sometime in early 1957. This was my first time away from home and so armed with a Rail pass I was dropped at Dorchester railway station to start what was an "eye opening" experience for a 15 year old country boy. Changing train at Bristol Temple Mead station was interesting then the next leg to Birmingham was mostly through beautiful English countryside. However, the next stage of the journey from Birmingham to Wolverhampton was for me "mind blowing". My memory is of a continuous journey through built up area of smoky factories and no countryside at all. This really was the "Black Country". Then on arriving at Wolverhampton, changing train for the local to Albrighton for the halt at RAF Cosford.

Then  began the testing. Lots and lots of aptitude tests, and physical exams. This all took two days as my memory tells me. And eventually the meeting with a Squadron leader to tell me my result.

My uncle Sidney was an aircraft engineer and Chief engineer of "Aden Airways" having been invalided out of  the RAF at the start of his career, but still going on to have a very interesting life working on all types of aircraft from the early 1930s to modern jets in the 1950s. This had captured my interest in aviation and so the RAF made sense for me. 

My test results, the Squadron Leader indicated, showed that I should go for the trade of Radar Mechanic. "I want to do engines" I said. Can I do that instead of Radar. "Not the best fit for you" he said. This debate continued for a while and he finally agreed that if it was "engines or nothing, I could do that, but Radar was a better fit with my aptitude". So I agreed to enrol for 32nd Entry Air Radar Boy Entrant, starting October 1957. So set myself on an interesting life career.

Other Memories of Dewlish life.

My dad had a motorbike and sidecar and one day he decided that it needed to have a de-coke and the valves needed to be reseated. So this turned into my first lesson in motor maintenance.  Grinding in the valves meant having a sucker on a stick and some grinding paste. Keep grinding until the sound of the valve being set in its seat was a solid clunk, then it was done. This stood me in good stead in later years when I had my first ford van.

EMIDEC 1100 my first computer job 1965


28jan2011 [25]
 Memories from Chris Morris

Good to find this site as I joined ICT in the summer of 1965 (I think) on my discharge from the RAF. My RAF service had been as an Air Radar Fitter (Fighter), having joined up as a Boy Entrant (32nd Entry) in 1957, served as an instructor at Cosford for two years as well as spending time at RAF Duxford, Watisham, and Henlow. My EMIDEC training took place at Stevenage and on completion of the course was assigned to the Ministry of Labour site in Watford as the junior site technician. The electronics was the easy part of working on the system for as far as I can recall. We had plenty of modules to repair and time to do them. What took me time was handling the printer, a SAMAS something or another. 130 character dot matrix printer that could do "page throws" right across the room. The name of the support technician who could do anything mechanical escapes me. But I recall that he raced motor bikes in an earlier life. My favorite pieces of the system were the 1 inch tape decks. 120 inches per second. Great fun getting these to perform at their best. Was sent up to Boots in Nottingham as a replacement technician for a few days and found their tape decks were in a very poor state. The worst problem that we had on the Watford system in my time there was a dropped EOP. But it happened only from time to time, creating a real crisis. Traced eventually to a bouncing contact in the main power switch box... My personal crisis was one late night shift when testing repaired modules after the live runs stopped at about midnight. Can't remember any detail of the problem, but just got the system running again about 30 minutes before we were scheduled to hand it back to the customer the next morning... Nick Meyer was one of the support engineers that I remember. I still know him and he lives in France near Geneva. Another of the "good guys" that I met again during my 25 years working for Digital Equipment Corp (DEC), in Reading and Geneva after leaving Watford. The only computer that I had seen prior to joining ICT was at the Royal Air Force Radar Research Establishment at Malvern in either late 1958 or early 1959. Lots of valves and CRTs. Many thanks for your interesting site about this early system. 

Link to Computer history site with lots of links https://www.emidec.org.uk/emihhw.htm


Monday 1 January 2018

Snowdrops and other growing things.

Helping my dad in the Bothy gardens went through a number of phases.

At first we wanted to clear a path from the house to the gate in the wall at what looked like the bottom of the garden. Clearing and having bonfires is my idea of having had fun.

The next task was to restore the health of the very many fruit trees in the garden. Dad had a book all about pruning fruit trees, so it was a job to be taken seriously. And slowly over a couple of years fruit began to appear. Apples, pears, plums, peaches of all varieties one could imagine. Coxes orange pipin apples are the best I can remember.

In the old house there were fruit storage shelves so we could keep some varieties of apples and pears for many months.

But the the best crop from the garden, down by the stream were the Snowdrops. Each Year we were living in the Bothy we (my sisters and me) picked snowdrops, put them into neat bunches of about 50 flowers each and backed with two Ivy leaves and tied neatly with rafia. Dad (or  Mum) packed them into boxes ready for transport to London market by train from Dorchester. When I closed my eyes at night after a day of Snowdropping, there they were...

Dad got a good price for the snowdrops too and paid me 1p per finished bunch. 

Saturday 21 February 2015

Life at The Bothy, Dewlish village.

So we were to move from the modern council house in Charminster to a cottage on the estate of Dewlish House, in of course the village of Dewlish.

The cottage was attached to the kitchen garden for Dewlish house and in the corner of a large field. The gardens were for the most part walled and enclosed about 2.5 acres with a stream running through the part outside the wall.

The cottage had not been lived in for about 11 years, and had been occupied by troops during the war. So when my father lit the fire in the front room, it filled with smoke because of the remains of birds nests in the chimney. The electrics were in a poor state too. However the kitchen had a great Aga range for cooking and heating the water which came from a well in the back yard.

The garden was a magical place and a bit like a jungle when we arrived. It was of course totally neglected but had a great variety of fruit trees including peaches, plumbs of all sorts and every type of apple that you could think of.


It was fun helping my dad slowly clear the garden, prune the fruit trees and bring the place back to life.

 

Monday 8 December 2014

Other Hardy's school experiences that stick in my menory.

Other Hardy's school experiences that stick in my memory.

One was of the art teacher who did Lion head sculptures to head the Gate at the entrance of the School. It was quite interesting to follow his progress as he worked on them. I wonder what happened to his work when the school was demolished.

The school was also where I started to lean to sell. I took apples from the garden of the house where we lived after leaving Charminster. I sold them to some fellow students for a few pence each.

One thing that did not appeal to me at all was the school dinners. My mother gave me the school dinner money (one shilling and six pence, if my memory serves me right) each Monday, and I used this to buy "fish and chips" at a local shop in Dorchester. I could do this for three days then went hungry for the last two.

The school divinity teacher was a tall quiet man who had once represented England in high jump at the Olympic games in the 1920's. Nice chap as I recall. But the school rugby coach, a red haired welsh man made me do rugby tackles on all the other players one be one. As I was by far the smallest boy playing, this was a bit rough but probably did me good.

Sunday 26 October 2014

After Kingston Russel - Charminster

Not quite sure when we left Kingston Russel, but I do remember being taken to Hardys Grammar School in Dorchester by my dad to meet the headmaster for an interview. It seems that although I had been accepted into Bridport Grammar it did not mean that I was automatically entitled to transfer to Hardys. However, I was allowed in and another chapter in my school life began.

As Hardys was a boys school and most of the teachers were former Army officers who had seen action in the second world war. The headmaster was a Major, the French teacher and most of the others were Captains as far a I can remember. The French teacher for my classes was nick named Calais (of course) and I did not learn much from him (but mostly my fault). As I have lived in French speaking Switzerland and France for many years now, I have paid a high price for my lack of interest as a student of the language. But I get by.

One of my happier school memories was of the CCF Combined cadet force. I was a radio operator and clearly recollect our camp on Bodmin moor one summer. We had a night exercise, with blank cartridges for our 303 guns and there were lots of Thunderflash  explosions all over the place. As the radio operator I was to relay Calais's orders to other groups. But it was such a still night and he shouted his instructions, I felt a bit redundant. But all good fun nevertheless. The most exciting activity was live firing the 303 gun on the 300yard range. The kick of it was quite something for a 13 year old lad.

The subject I enjoyed most was "agricultural science". I though I might like becoming a farm manager as a career. However, after one year of the course, the teacher running it left the school, so that was the end of that.