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We used to use these in the 1980s on our combined cadet force field days. I was in the signals division of our school CCF (less drill and more playing with rad
by nickcw 3y ago
We used to use these in the 1980s on our combined cadet force field days.
I was in the signals division of our school CCF (less drill and more playing with radios!) and it was our job to lay communications lines on field day. I have vivid memories of laying (what seemed like) miles of field telephone wires over heathlands and through woods and soldering them together with these self soldering sleeves.
They had a part on them like a match head which you could strike to set them off. They would get very hot and melt the solder inside the copper tube allowing you to push the two bared ends of wire in which hopefully you'd manage before burning yourself or the solder solidified again! I think they were something like thermite - they certainly smelt like it.
The CCF had lots of WWII surplus stuff, like massive radios with valves in and really leaky canvas tents!
- tetris11 3y agoCCF, what a fever dream that was. Give a bunch of teenagers guns once or twice and they will march in formation every Tuesday after school for reasons unclear even to the teacher-organizers. I chose RAF over Army or Navy, thinking I'd get to fly at some point. Nope, just a co-flight in a glider once a year. Lame. The army kids got to go to action camps, do paintballing, and regularly go to firing ranges. Again, all kids (~14yrs old) in the UK, in the middle of a London offshoot town with the rifles locked behind a rickety door.
- zerkten 3y agoMy cousin chose RAF and got some single-engine flight training. This was early-90s. I don't recall exactly how much of his private licence it helped with, but it was a fair bit.
- KineticLensman 3y agoMy school had the option of the Duke of Edinburgh's scheme instead. I chose this because I didn't want to wear itchy uniforms once a week and be shouted out by teachers who seemed to have fond memories of National Service. I eventually got to meet Prince Phillip, who asked me whose heavenly bodies I looked at using the telescope I'd made on a D of E project.
- joncrocks 3y agoI think this must have been dependent on the school/location as I was also in an RAF section and we flew in (small) planes maybe once a term. For maybe 30 minutes, and lots of waiting around, but was fun. Got to do a fair bit of aerobatics as well. Obviously we weren't flying solo (although there were a handful that did a course that culminated in a solo flight) Also went gliding once.
- rolph 3y agoi had my days like that too, every 2weeks the big boys would arrive in a couple deuces full of thier own toys, so they would go on maneuvers and we had more to polish and clean up.
- julian_t 3y agoThat brings back a lot of memories. I too laid a lot of cable, and as well as field telephones we had 18, 19 and 88 sets. My first introduction to radio communication. What now seems completely surreal is that we also had all sorts of weaponry: rifles, Sten and Sterling sub-machine guns, Bren guns and even a couple of mortars. These were locked away in gun safes and anything automatic was supposed to be disabled, but anyone could have got in using an angle grinder and I'm sure that many of the guns could have been activated again. A more innocent age, I suppose.