Radio and rails...

Seeing as I closed my valve collection website down and removed much of my personal stuff before it got archived (valvecollector.uk) I suppose I had better keep my story somewhere… I started collecting when I was just a kid but only seriously from about 1999 when I set up my first collection website, initially on a bit of webspace at work. From there it moved about a few times, first to some commercial webspace provided free by a friend who owned an ISP, then to our house, then past three other ISPs to a dedicated physical server which I rented, and then on to a VPS where it stayed until closed down and archived at the beginning of 2024. I used to collect just about everything but it got out of hand when the collection reached 3,000 types,some of which were huge beasts. From then I settled on just CV types and almost all of the non-CV valves - about 1,500 went to the National Valve Museum, which has a website almost as old as my own. I first became interested in valves, and electronics in general when I was about 8. My grandad drew a sine wave on the wall to try…

All this packet radio progressing around the place reminds me of a time long ago, pre-Internet where dial-up BBSs became the new thing in town. Back then I had a BBC Micro and a modem that ran at two speeds - I forget which now (will edit later!) and I persuaded my mum to get BT in to fit a socket rather than the hard-wired phone we had then. This let me plug the modem in. I used to use a BBS called ‘More Summer Wine’ plus one other but I forgot the name. Much of the activity back then is lost in the mist of time (or rather I just can’t remember) but sending and receiving mail was fun. BBS systems were all a part of the wider FidoNet. Mail would be routed between the various BBS systems, many of which only had the one telephone line and so would be inaccessible while that was happening. Indeed, they were mostly single user anyway, although if the sysop was there you could message them via the console of the BBS which was probably sitting in someone’s bedroom. I am reminded of the many times I would set the BBC and…

Made some useful progress on packet radio today. I managed to access a node in Scotland and one near the south coast on 40m, 300 baud. This was using QtSoundModem on the Linux box connected to the FT450D via a Signalink, fed into the random length wire in the loft. Access was via EasyTerm running on the Windows PC at first, but then I managed to compile QtTermTCP so ran that on the Linux box instead. A bit of fun but it proves the possibility of using 40m to interconnect where there is currently no VHF or UHF paths here. Fingers crossed once I get some wire and metal in the air things will only improve.

So... I am out of the valve game. Finally. Of my collection I am keeping the 10 rarest, friends are picking at the list with their wants and the rest are available if anyone is interested. Note that these are not 'audio' types and are all CV marked which is what I collected. Some are rare, some very rare, most are mundane but you never know you may find something of interest. The dwindling list, automatically generated is at https://m0rvb.uk/valves/valves.php along with contact information.

I've been a member of Facebook for many years, joining since before it became the advertising behemoth it is today. Back then I did make fairly regular use of it to interact with friends and colleagues as well as groups. But my use of it dwindled to reading group posts and posting 'happy birthday' messages. But I kept it. As hobbies changed with time and retirement I joined several new groups. Again, really all I did was read posts. At some stage during this time I also began to use Messenger. I now find that I rarely get any use out of Facebook and only have two contacts in Messenger that I do not have elsewhere. So I thought it time to get rid of Facebook. That did not go as planned! First, the Messenger app on the Mac decided it would log me out and I cannot log back in. I get as far as the 2FA challenge where it allegedly sends me a text which never arrives. Three goes at that and I just deleted the app, life is too short. Then I went into Facebook and after being bounced around between Facebook and the overarching Meta sites…