Best Boots

A 12 inch wooden ruler did the job..A piece of cardboard with a hole cut in it for bulling gaiter straps

As you say Total Madness.

Gordon
On a slightly different slant, in the RSigs did your Technical soldiers repair equipment right down to basic (as we would now say Board Level) or was it just a case of changing components

Les

I repaired equipment which often meant changing components.in situ and in workshops.When i did my conversion to TE Tech some cypher equipment was repaired at what we called "board level".iE tracing a fault to a particular board and then changing it..Not sure what happened to the faulty boards,but suspect there was a designated repair center.
Manufacturer ,REME , Signals? Who knows?.I did the conversion in Singapore (18 Sigs) and never saw any of the equipment again..

Thanks for that Gordon, I just wanted to get some idea in case any of my Gandchildren tackle me about joining up, I myself went into electronics when I left the Army, went to Chichester College and did what they called a condensed course, all squashed into 11 and a half months, it was in B/W TV and Radio (touching on Colour TV) and that was all down to component level, did any of your training give you equal qualifications with civilians, like C&G

Les

As apprentices we were encouraged to study for C&G and HNC.My grandson is presently serving in Royal Signals as a Communication Systems Engineer.He recently completed an army funded degree course.In my day that would have meant an automatic commision.

Here`s a link to what they do now.A far cry from my day

http://www.army.mod.uk/signals/soldier-careers/default.aspx

Very helpful Gordon, many thanks for the link, it is only a shame I did not receive the guidance when joining up, nothing at all just into the info office and sign, still I did enjoy my time with Redifusion and Granada, became trouble-shooter covering south east, non of my boys made it for the Army, oldest turned down, medical grounds and my second youngest joined REME but it didn't last

Les

Even we OWL's were not bad at the odd repair. We used the Foreman's AVO and an old soldering iron, heated up over the cookers portable.
Got an old valve radio in my garage which I put together from a kit when I was in Singapore - 1966. There were quite a lot of radio component stores out there at the time and a lot of the kits came from The Peoples Republic of China. Still know my resistor colour code - Black, Brown Red, orange etc (body, tip, spot) Not bad for an operator.

Jimsigs1

Black ba****ds rape our young girls but virgins get wise

Black,brown,red,orange,yellow,green,blue,violet,grey,white

Some things never leave you

Hey Gordon,
Thant's a good way to remember the colour code. Wonder if they still use the code today whenever a resistor is used perhaps on amplifiers etc.
Remember being in BMH Singapore and making a little transistor radio with soldering iron plugged in etc. Packed it all away whenever matron was on the prowl.

Jimsigs1

same with mechanics now, just plug in the computor and change the component it indicates. i cant work on my own cars anymore, but i do like it when something a bit older turns and needs a bit of mechanical fault finding done

Steve,

I'm lucky. Whilst I like you cannot mess with my 'modern car', I can at least fiddle with my 'classic bike', a 1964 Triumph twin.

Jimsigs1

I always remembered the colour codes on resistors by the following:

Blushing Bride Rips Off Yellow Girdle Because Visitor Got Wild

funny how these things stick

Les

Roughly for Line, Roughly for Elevation - Accurate for Line, Accurate for Elevation (if you can't beat them, join them).

Shelldrake wrote:

Roughly for Line, Roughly for Elevation - Accurate for Line, Accurate for Elevation (if you can't beat them, join them).

Shouldn't that be E L X L E Badge ?

brum wrote:

Shelldrake wrote:

Roughly for Line, Roughly for Elevation - Accurate for Line, Accurate for Elevation (if you can't beat them, join them).

Shouldn't that be E L X L E Badge ?

As well.

Strange how this thread as wandered off Best Boot bulling onto Resistor colour codes..........lol

maverick52 wrote:

Strange how this thread as wandered off Best Boot bulling onto Resistor colour codes..........lol

And kneeling Gun Drill - it happens when you get to a certain age, but to stay on thread, I didn't half knacker my Best Boots while doing it (kneeling Gun Drill, that is).

Back to best boots - I remember some of the lads at AAS Harrogate were issued with brown boots (don't dare mention Stanley Holloway's song).Then they had to dye them black. What a palava.

Jimsigs1

what a lot of messing about

Les

We had to do that with our brown plimsoles.then bull them for the PT comps.How daft were we?

Not so much a case of daft, more doing as we were ordered, no light beasting in those days

Les

Beasting????An expression i never heard of untill quite recently.

Gordon. wrote:

Beasting????An expression i never heard of untill quite recently.

Turning brown plimsolls into black was to be our fate at Hereford too. We had to have them highly brush-polished. Why the idiots couldn't just give us black plimsolls is beyond me !

"Beasting" is another of those words that I started to hear after I was demobbed. Along with "Crab Air", "Ruperts" and "Scaleybacks".
There were others but they elude me at the moment.

Yes you're right of course, beasting is quite modern terminology, I believe the modern soldier think it sounds bad, I heard it from one of my sons who joined REME, seemed to think some of the soldiers were really hard done by, I think if they had a couple of days of what it used to be like we wouldn't have many left

Les

brum wrote:

Gordon. wrote:

Beasting????An expression i never heard of untill quite recently.

Turning brown plimsolls into black was to be our fate at Hereford too. We had to have them highly brush-polished. Why the idiots couldn't just give us black plimsolls is beyond me !

Because us guys at Troon had them, we had to turn them in to brown ones - nothing like keeping busy!!