I was also advised to take on a Course at Chippenham Technical College, where the course contents were influenced by the proximity of Westinghouse, who provided most of the scholars.
Thus it was all electrical motors and generators plus the catenaries of sagging power lines between pylons. They let me start on the third year because I already had S1 and S2 from my pre-war studies in the field of architecture. So now I was swotting-up in two different fields though loosely connected.
How could I fit all this in together with my love for a few pints in the evening? I sure burnt the midnight oil, I can tell you.
I did start to earn my keep when it came to directing the efforts of the Development Assembly Department. These chaps put together the early models after the labs had had their first go with lab built layouts and croc clips dangling all over the place. They brought in the professional touch of proper soldering without dry joints.
However, they had a typical contempt for the engineers, who may have understood the theory but were not exactly practical. Johnnie Rocket, for example was renowned for encircling himself with croc clip wires and then trying to walk away to answer the phone.
So these Assemblers tried me out with the usual deliberate mistakes to catch out an engineer. It didn't work and I came down on them like a ton of bricks. After that we got along fine, though I do recall that when I first assembled the duplicate rat races I found it necessary to put in two screws before linking them together. I wrote this out and stressed the point. Yet, clever blighters that they were, they ignored my advice. So they finished up with an assembly, which was minus two screws inside. And they had done it with 5 assemblies!
After this my status went up considerably and there was no more argument, as they had to dismantle and reassemble all 5 of them.
I started to pull my weight when it came to the layout inside the box. For this I had to co-operate with the draughtsman who would draw it up. We had just about met the needs, including all the limitations imposed by the Ministry to meet maximum dimensions of possible replacements from different sources when they dropped a bombshell on us and required the TR Unit to be made two inches shorter.
While it doesn't sound much, it made life very difficult. We eventually succeeded in cutting it down but we had to utilise every bit of space, not helped by the fact that some of the bits like the IF strip and the AFC were designed outside of our lab, we just put them in the box.
I think it was the second Christmas I was there when I was tasked to wire up and assemble the first full unit. By now it was agreed that my standard of soldering was acceptable to pass the most stringent inspectors and I was cleared for overtime over the Christmas period to bring the first box up to operating standard.
But first the lab (and everyone else) adjourned for a pre-Christmas drink. Knowing that I was likely to return that evening they hid the box away from me to prevent any disaster. I came back but couldn't find it!! Next morning, more sober, I found where they had hidden it, up in the loft of this old house, which was full of odd corners.
