I have been in the electronic industry for the past thirty years resposible for the installation and maintenance of industrial electronic equipment, mainly equipment used for precise positioning offshore. I was born in the UK, where I received a degree in electronic enginneering from Surrey University in the early 70's.

Since the mid 70's I have installed and maintained radio positioning systems, in various places around the world, for use offshore. The first sytems were land-based HF, UHF and LF transmitters of various sorts broadcasting precisely timed signals. These days of course everything revolves around GPS, satellite data links and computers.

I spent several years in Asia installing and maintaining LF navigation transmitters. These were pulse transmitters operating at 100kHz, which basically comprised of large oil filled capacitors, discharged into a tank circuit via scr's and a saturable reactor. Not unlike the early spark transmitters really except that the transmission timing was controlled to 10 nanoseconds using a cesium beam frequency standard. This work also involved a lot of SSB communications installations, something which is not required much any more as these days you just pick up your mobile phone to make a call. It took me a long time to break the habit of saying 'over' at the end of each sentence when mobile phones became available.

I am now married to a lovely lady from Texas, and for the past few years I have lived and worked in Houston. Finally stopped moving, and I've been able to start collecting bits and pieces of old equipment. So we now have old radios, test equipment, books, components taking up half the garage, the spare bedroom and various other places in the house.

I have always been interested in 'old' electronic equipment, my main interests are older equipment from the 1920's and 30's, and tube audio equipment from the 50's. I get most pleasure out of turning a 'basket case' back into a presentable, working radio, rather than going in the trash, gone forever. Most of the radios I have came from local auctions, so they tend to be from the mass production days of the 40's, I keep looking for those more interesting items but they do not appear too often. For me the fun of collecting is going to garage sales, local auctions, checking out antique malls on road trips. Of course, the other way to 'collect' these days is to sit at home and buy from on-line auctions, but thats no fun, and prices are high. I do enjoy searching the on-line auctions for items which are badly listed and selling for lower prices, mis-spelled names or words are quite common. Try amplifire, amplfier, or raido.

Thanks again for looking!