Do It Yourself Electronics
Background
My background to taking over the engineering at Radio Heatherwood,was my knowledge of hi-fi and the ability to use a soldering iron.
In and around 1985 I took over the role of looking after the engineering.
In 1988 after the studio went live on the AM inductive loop service, I joined BT as a systems engineer and this gave me a lot of knowledge in the fields of electronics and the computer field.
One of the most important tasks in the early days was constructing small hobbyist circuits ( Black Boxes ). The first one was a line driver, which would take the audio signal at the fete public address stand and send it back to the radio studio. The drawing for this was supplied by an engineer from Kingston hospital radio, No pictures exist. This was the start of thirty years of, do it yourself black boxes.
The station in the early days was always short of money and professional circuits were not open to us.
The majority of the items were built using parts from Maplins and other hobbyist shops.
In December 2016, when the engineering was dismantled a number of those circuits constructed over the years were photographed and scrapped.
This is not a definitive list, as other audio circuits were built, but they are not recorded here.
