Two of my granddaughters stayed with us during the school holidays, and as one of our excursions, we went to the Brooklands Museum in Weybridge.  For those who don’t know it, this is sited on the old early 1900s motor racing circuit, which became an important aircraft manufacturing site during and after the Second World War.

Consequently, it has the most amazing collection of racing cars and aircraft that you could imagine, including a complete Concorde.  My elder granddaughter (aged 14) disappeared and we found her in the pilot’s seat of a real (but no longer functional) airliner, being given instructions on the controls, whilst in one of the many other fascinating exhibits, my younger granddaughter (aged 9) was sending messages on a Morse simulator.

This triggered an ancient memory in my mind – I had learned Morse as a youngster, but never became very competent at reading it, because it was difficult to find any way of getting the practice.

I’d made a number of radios as a kid, and it was always my ambition to become a radio amateur (a ham) so that I could transmit messages too.   I took the City and Guilds of London Radio Amateur’s Certificate which made me eligible to get a ‘B’ Transmitting Licence, but I really wanted the proper ‘A’ licence which required me to learn Morse.  Anyway, by this time, I was trying to build up a career in my first job and my accommodation in a flat in North London was hardly suitable for rigging up a nice, long aerial (antenna).

But I thought it might be nice to look into this again. Of course, radios are now completely different from the little single-valve ones that I had made in the dim and distant past, and I discovered that the licensing was also entirely different.

Instead of getting a licence from the General Post Office under the Wireless Telegraphy Act 1949, Ofcom is now responsible for licensing and there are three grades of licence – Foundation, Intermediate and Full.  Moreover, it is no longer a requirement to pass a test in Morse, but each level requires you to take an exam. Looking at the specifications, the technical stuff was pretty familiar to me and although the legal requirements have changed, they could be assimilated with a bit of study.  But it would take time, effort and money.

Then I read that if you had the City and Guild’s Radio Amateur’s Certificate, this qualifies you to get a full licence anyway!

So I now have a new hobby.

More later.