The Importance of a Bulb

Ian Hamilton

I was posted to 44 Squadron (Rhodesia Squadron) from RAF Waddington in early 1964 as a 20 year old Air Wireless Fitter.

I had just finished my training at RAF Yatesbury No 2 Radio School, sadly now no more.

For those of you who served during this period, passing out successfully from your “fitters course” was a major achievement as many never did and were destined to be mechanics for the rest of their service life. Those who did were full of “technical know-how”.

Cold War exercises practised at the time were known as “Mickey Finn’s” where aircraft would be readied for war and dispersed to many parts of the UK. Out of interest, this did not happen during the Cuba crisis when the  V force was “totally ready” to go if Krushchev did not back down from deploying missiles to Cuba.

Our Prime Minister at the time, Macmillan did not want the Russians to think we were going for first strike.

Interestingly, the Ground Crew at Waddington were working full out weeks before they knew of the Cuba crisis. Only when it appeared in the National newspapers did they realise why they had been working full out.

Part of my job during this preparation was to retune the aircraft VHF Tx/Rx sets to the “war frequencies” which would be used on dispersion. The normal method for this would be to use the test equipment supplied by the manufacturers, this equipment was relatively bulky and took some time to set up and then to tune the radio.

Back to the light bulb. Quite close to the radio equipment on the Vulcan was a fuse panel with a probe and light bulb for checking the fuses. As wireless fitters, what we used to do was remove the light bulb from the fuse panel and place it across the transmitter output coaxial socket, transmit and tune for maximum brightness from the light bulb. The receiver was then tuned to the same frequency avoiding harmonic frequency selection. This was done for the remaining 9 channels and took only a few minutes for all channels. Bulb replaced in fuse holder, job completed.

Out of interest the VHF radio then was totally valve operated.

The last Mickey Finn that I was on was in 1964.

If you have any fond memories, stories and pictures about yours, or a family members experience during iconic events, or during times of service, we’d love to hear them! Please get in touch at newseditor@vulcantothesky.org.