Unfortunately, that's true enough as far as broadcast stuff anyway. I started as a short wave listener and spent an awful lot of hours as a kid, mainly at night when I should have been sleeping listening atarions all over the world. The amateur hf bands are still pretty busy though, which is good.

It's still pretty popular thankfully. I think in part that it's a pretty broad church. Personally I love building stuff, but other people are more in to operating and the more social side of the hobby.

Well, one can do most of it on line these days. And with all the Chinese equipment around its probably more affordable now than ever, especially for low power operation. The RSGB has a lot if good information about all this on their website so worth a look

Most of the Anne Mc Caffrey books, the dragons of pern etc. A lot of her books had good female lead characters.

Had to drive a couple for work and hated the reliance on touchscreens for just about everything, much prefer driving older cars.

It is all rather a bit lovely indeed. Sadly like many people not likely to ever own one but nice to see physical controls coming back again. Never liked the touchscreen controls as they are nowhere near as intuitive and safe to use as physical buttons and switches

Rather helpfull to have that kind of shop so accessible, not so good for ones wallet I suspect though!

Things change but to be honest I think that despite losing local shops we probably have better access to Components and test equipment etc than ever before via ebay etc.

Used to go to the vhf convention and Sandown etc. Was great to wander around checking out what was there. Sadly it seems there simply isn't the market there anymore, especially after covid broke the annual cycle of rallies

Small world Phillip, at one point used to work just down the road in that industrial estate along the road to Morden. Used to like popping in to servio to get the odd things. In fact they were the first electronics shop I ever visited back when I was a kid.

Unfortunately, due to health issues cannot drive at the moment so it's a bit more difficult to get to rallies. Its a shame, a lot can be bought on line but its nice to have good look around for things in person.

We had home radio and servio radio locally but there were not really in the same league. Sadly even the local rallies have gone away now. Thank heavens for on line shopping.

Never managed to get to them as a bit too far away from surrey, but would have been great to spend a few hours rummaging.

Was once witness to the very impressive meltdown a wireman had when he forgot to route a cable through a gland before terminating a 50 way cable connector. While I did feel bad for them it was pretty entertaining to watch...admittedly with crossed fingers that it not happen to me though😇

Was wondering about that myself, hope they have not gone away completely. We need all the good humour we can get right now.

One really annoying thing is that after calling to cancel the company tends to make a better offer to try and keep your business. I always decline such offers, if they cannot give me their best price without being prompted by a customer going elsewhere then I do not want to do business with them

If the Iranians decided to get serious I rather think the odd mine would be little more than an added distraction to the number of anti ship missiles they would likely have launched at any American warship daft/unfortunate enough to be in the area

Ouch! I had mine go on my Fiesta, luckily it just snapped off when I got in the car one winter and caused no further damage. A right pain to fix though as the springs needed a different spring compressor than I had.

Sorry to say it Al, but all accounts lead me to the determination that back then BAOR would have a short but very exciting life if we had not been very, very lucky and this guy made a very brave decision.

Amazing how often having the right tool for the job makes doing things so much easier. Although it's my experience that sometimes...just sometimes a very large percussive device is the ultimate solution😇

They have been around for a long time Robin, used to use them all the time back when I worked in electronics professionally. Very handy bit of kit that makes preparing the IC leads for insertion very easy. Now easily available on Ebay etc.

Those types work rather well, although one does need a couple of sizes depending on the most common IC's one uses. It's certainly a lot better than gently adjusting the IC legs against the worktop.

Very sad to hear they are closing, the owner delivered a great product and great service when I bought one of their antennas. It's a real shame but considering how difficult it is for small niche companies at the moment not that much of a surprise.

Brings a whole new dimension to proper time management

Absolutely, really should have been included in the Human Rights Act. To be honest the majority of the meetings I gave attended over the years could have been replaced with an email or two.

Safer is such a subjective term. The potential is there, literally in the case of HT incidents. Even playing with antennas can be dangerous with falls from height either oneself or antenna parts or masts. Life is inherently dangerous, our hobbies just allow a slightly more interesting set of hazards

Used to have a garden full of thorny roses so even though I used PPE often got badly scratched as the roses found chinks in my armour. Dangerous business gardening ought to have a government health warning 😇

I wrangled my way in to being in charge of the library in secondary school which had quite a decent collection of SF. Also very useful as it meant I had a key to get in to the school early, great in winter, not something they would dream if these days.

Might I suggest some suitable PPE and possibly an appropriate bladed tool for the removal of said brambles in a somewhat less painful manner😇