My first connection with Blue Sky was when I got a job at EKCO Malmesbury as Laboratory Assistant. It was 1953 and I had just left the Navy with no qualifications and little else to recommend me, as I was basically Aircrew. But I was familiar with the early radar and a colleague at Lee-on-Solent who had been to Malmesbury as a Chief Radio Mechanic told me to write to Mr.PL Stride.
My interview with Mr. Stride lasted some hours and though he soon found out what I didn't know and I felt I had failed miserably, he must have seen some promise as to my amazement he offered me a job although it was a big comedown from the money I got as a Chief Petty Officer but at the time I was grateful for any kind of job.
I was attached to Mr. David Evans who himself had been commissioned as an RNVR officer in the Radio/Electrical sphere. I discovered that we were responsible for the TR Unit for this new project. Also in our Lab. but independent to us, were Mr. Cyril Drew assisted by Bill Graville who was designing the Drive Modulator Unit, which would feed into the TR to drive the Magnetron.
It was ages before I began to understand what the project was all about, not only was there an air of secrecy but even when they began to tell me this and that I still didn't really understand. I was the proverbial dim beginner.
Our first step was design of transformers to power the unit. Two years later I might have been able to do it on my own but initially David did the design and I was set the task of wiring up and testing. We used oil-filled transformers to dissipate the heat. I further learnt that the TR would be in a sealed box with a heat exchanger on the front to dissipate the heat generated.
The exchanger was like a car radiator with air pumped through to keep it cool. We had been expecting to put in some chokes in the power supply system that would act as swinging chokes, but in all my testing and measurements at various loads I saw no sign that they were acting this way.
Note: Some two years after we did the design, someone had a thought about oil-filled transformers. 'What if the oil leaked and happened to spray on a hot wire-wound resistor'? They tried this out and the box exploded!! By then we were committed and just went on hoping that our transformers were not overstretched and that few wire wound resistors were anywhere nearby!
By now I was beginning to learn what else was going to go in our box. We would have the Magnetron and a Pulse Transformer. Also various bits of wave-guide known as a rat race which with spark-gaps would determine whether in transmission mode or receiving. There would also be an IF strip as initial amplification when receiving and an AFC strip to match the receiver to the magnetron frequency.
As I barely understood any of this I was directed towards reading and learning the M.I.T. Manuals. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) who had done much of the experimental work during the war once they had been directed towards the original British ideas? This was hard going, as you may well guess.
