Comments by "knoxieman" (@knoxieman) on "Amateur Radio - The Dying Hobby?" video.

  1. Really good video mate (I am up late its 2 in the morning!!) funny you showed the laughing policeman, when I first got my licence in 1990 I used to hear him on the Coventry repeater, he used to talk in a really high pitched punch and judy type voice and wind people up, ill be honest I thought he was funny and it was the harsh reactions he got from licensed amateurs that were even funnier, most of my mates that were hams at the time most of them much older than me thought the laughing policeman was funny. There were some nasty incidents in that time though with repeaters being torched and home made keying devices left in fields near repeaters with the sole purpose of jamming the repeaters, I heard of plenty of cases of hams being targeted by annoyed neighbours with bad TV signals hammering nails in to coax and cutting it of flush so it would short the cable out but not be seen. As naughty as I got was the first time I read the RSGB manual in 1984 I noticed a wide band oscillator circuit using a BFY90 transistor, me and my nerdy buddies (think stranger things...yes we were just like that) built these little oscillators and went on to have hours of fun annoying neighbours and friends by blanking out their TV pictures, the best fun we had was pretending to buy TV sets from shops and switching these things on and off in our pockets and banging the top of the set to make out they were faulty!! ha ha pretty harmless but lots of fun and that's what got me in to amateur radio. I was also an original CB radio user in 1981, my dads mate used to visit with an AM cb in his car and a DB27 antenna, I thought this was so cool, i used to knock on peoples doors if they had an antenna on the house and ask if I could see their setup, can you imagine any mum letting their kid do that now? ha ha loved my CB years so happy I lived through that era. I also built many pirate radio transmitters in the early 90s some of which I still have (and must do a video on), the first time I tested the radio out in a cold oxfordshire field in the late eighties and stood there holding a 4 foot floursecent tube in my hand and it lit up like a light saber when I held it near the home made dipole I made out of welding rods i was hooked!! I still think some part of radio is like voodoo ha ha. I must do another video soon!! take care mate :-)
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