Bills funeral will be on Monday Dec 5th.
1.30 p.m., St Thomas’s Church, Maesglas, Newport NP20 3AT
2.30 p.m. at Gwent Crematorium, Croesyceiliog, Cwmbran, NP44 2BZ.
Family flowers only, donations in lieu to the R.A.F. Association, c/o Tovey Brothers Undertakers, 9-11, Cardiff Rd., Newport NP20 3EH.
I have just heard the sad news from his son, Nick, that Bill Cooke GW0ION, past Chief Engineer and Managing Director of Eddystone Radio Limited has passed away today very peacefully aged 96, at home in Newport, Wales. Eddystone was, of course, a hugely important part of his life and Nick reports that a photo of the factory was on the wall above his bed. Nick will let me know details of the funeral arrangements when known. Bill’s wrote about his life in the “Cooke Report” which can be downloaded from the History section of this website..
RIP old friend
Chris G0EYO
Gerry O’Hara has written many of the restoration articles on Eddystone receivers on this website. Please be advised that his old Telus e mail address is out of date. Gerry’s current e mail address is gerrycohara@gmail.com
We are grateful to Dave for sending us pictures of his pair of Eddystone pillow loudspeakers made by Eddystone in the 1950’s. Graeme G3GGL (SK) described them in the QRG as follows; “A flat , smooth, bakelite grille, approx. 4” dia. by 1” thick. “When slipped under a pillow, speech and music can be heard clearly by a resting person but will not be audible to other occupants of the room.” circa.1950. Original price £3 14s 3d including matching transformer, flex and plug. Advertised on the back of the instruction manual for the Model 670. Extremely rare. “.
Dave says that they were made for Eddystone by ACOS who made crystal gramophone pick-ups & microphones in the 50’s & 60’s. They are high impedance so he thinks they are also crystal. The small brown Bakelite box is the transformer of which he only has one. Primary has 3 taps to match radio’s speaker impedance, the secondary only one winding for pillow speaker. They have PILLOTONE on the front as in the Brochure etc. All the wiring is rubber insulated. They were sold as Eddystone Accessory Model 1419.
G6XJ Arthur Edwards, (Sales Director at Strattons) in 1929
Matt Twyman GW6KOA who used to be a test engineer at Eddystone in the 1980’s and 90’s (working on 1650 Receivers as I recall) sent me a page from an old Shortwave Magazine of January 1949 which showed Arthur Edwards G6XJ operating his station in 1929. Arthur Edwards was the Sales Director for Strattons for many years from its early days until the early 60’s before it was sold to Marconi.
There has been a long conversation on the UK Vintage Radio and Restoration Forum about Wendy Mott’s experience in restoring a 888. Many people contributed to this conversation and I asked Wendy if she would produce an article for this website on her experiences. You can find this on the Restoration section of the Technical Folder (above)
On behalf of the Eddystone User Group, I wish all our readers a very Merry Xmas and a Happy and Prosperous New Year. If you are feeling generous and have found the website useful then you might wish to make a small donation to the website’s running costs. You can find details on how to do this on the home page left hand pane. To all those who were generous in their contributions in 2015, I thank you very much. Without your support we would not be able to provide this free service to all our Eddystone Radio fans.
Best wishes
Chris G0EYO EUG Webmaster
You may recall a recent news item regarding whether there really was an Eddystone Television. This had been triggered by an E bay auction of a dealers sign which indicated that they sold Eddystone Shortwave and Television apparatus. The sign, with a starting price of £200 failed to get any offers on E bay.
Last week I noticed that the same sign had been put in a Chippenham Auction Rooms auction of Toys, Enamel signs and Packaging which was held on Friday 27th November. The estimate in the catalogue was £300 to £400 but again it failed to meet its reserve and was passed over. I wonder where it will turn up next.
The correspondence about Eddystone TV’s prompted Eddystone guru Gerry O’Hara VE7GUH to remind us about a the spoof Article on Eddystone TV he prepared for April Fool’s Day a few years back –
Still not sure if Eddystone ever made and sold TV sets by the way!.
Interesting story from John KA5QEP on the EUG forum this week.
Apparently several times a year the ARRL, who are the national amateur group in the US, runs a frequency measuring test. Signals are broadcast on three ham bands and hams are invited to measure the exact frequency and send them in. After the contest, the results are given. This time the emphasis was on vintage receivers, so John used his Eddystone EC958/3. He only used the frequencies as read from the dials after calibrating the BFO and fine tuning controls to give a zero beat at the nearest 10 KHz calibration point, and then zero beat the signal. He didn’t use counters or signal generators.
Here are his results:
80 Meters: 3598.1KHz, accurate frequency was 3598.13122. I was off by -31 Hz.
160 Meters: 1842.05KHz, accurate frequency was 1841.98851. I was off by 61 Hz
40 Meters: No signal was heard.
These results were at least as good or better as those from a BC-211 vintage frequency meter another ham used. John says he spent a lot of time fixing up and aligning the EC958/3 and it performed very well. “It’s an excellent piece of equipment” (John Reed, KA5QEP)
Eddystone Dealers sign with TV reference?
A recent E-bay offer of a dealer’s sign advertising Eddystone Shortwave Sets and Television Apparatus, raised the old question of the televisions that Eddystone were supposed to have made in the 1950’s. Despite requests in the Eddystone User Group newsletter over the years nothing of substance was ever discovered about these sets which were supposed to be consoles. It was my impression from speaking to Bill Cooke in the 1980s that these were prototypes made and used by the directors and never put on the market. This is somewhat contradicted by the dealer’s sign but there is no record of any Traders Information on the set as you would expect from a commercial product. I can also find no reference to a television set in the BP register (register of all top level drawings or “ blueprints”). There was a suggestion that they were projection type sets, as an ex Merchant Navy Chief Steward told Ted Moore that he recalls seeing an Eddystone projection console on a P&O ship that was very difficult to install and set up but again no firm evidence. I also cannot see any reference to televisions in Bill’s autobiography “The Cooke Report” which can be downloaded from this site. A real mystery, will we ever know the facts?