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