When I was at school I was in the combined cadet force, and being interested in electronics I gravitated to Signals as it was known. On exercises it was our jo

When I was at school I was in the combined cadet force, and being interested in electronics I gravitated to Signals as it was known. On exercises it was our job to provide communications and quite often we would lay miles of copper wires in the woods for the field telephones and join the wires together with these devices. The black powder is some kind of thermite I think - lighting it would melt the solder in the copper tube, you'd push the copper wires you'd pre stripped into it and you'd hold it long enough for it to solidify, which was sometimes long enough to burn your fingers! In the UK in the 80s the CCF had lots of surplus WW2 equipment. Beautiful valve radios and classic 303 rifles!