Messenger Belfall Reporting: I Have Delivered My Message

Derrick Belfall. Photo courtesy of Mrs. Rita McInnes.

Derrick Belfall. Photo courtesy of Mrs. Rita McInnes.

Today marks the 75th anniversary of the death of a British Boy Scout, Derrick Belfall, who gave his life in the service of his country and his King.

Life111840Just over 75 years ago, the November 18, 1940, issue of Life magazine carried this photo of British air raid wardens gathering prior to having to go to work for the night.  The man on the phone is just receiving the “yellow warning” advising that enemy planes were approaching the country.  The young man resting is probably a messenger, who would be called upon to deliver messages to civilian defense headquarters if the telephones failed.

The men here are in Churchill, a village coincidentally sharing the name of the prime minister, located about 14 miles from the port of Bristol.  These men so far felt a little out of the war, since, there had been nothing to do, no bomb wreckage, no casualties, no fires.  But the same scene was playing itself out in other cities and villages, and many of those men, young and old, would soon be at the heart of the war.

Derric Belfall. Photo courtesy of Mrs. Rita McInnes.

Derric Belfall. Photo courtesy of Mrs. Rita McInnes.

On the night of December 2, 1940, a similar scene was playing itself out just a few miles away in Bristol.  Planes were approaching the country, and the men of Bristol received the warning.  Among them was a fourteen year old Boy Scout,  Derrick Belfall, of 109 Bishop Rd, Bishopston, Bristol, the only son of Cecil Ernest and Mary (née Miller) Belfall.  Like the young man in the photo above, he was a civilian defense messenger.

Under the regulations, the minimum age for messengers was sixteen.  But fourteen-year-old Belfall had been persistent, and his parents and the authorities had finally allowed him to serve.  On December 2, the yellow warning turned into a real attack on Bristol, and the civilian defense volunteers had a long difficult evening ahead of them.

Another Boy Scout messenger explained, in the September 1942 issue of Boys’ Life, the duties of messenger:

When a bomb drops one of the first people on the spot is either the head warden or one of the senior wardens. He always has a messenger with him; one of us Scouts. What he does as soon as he gets there is to make out a report on what has happened, give it to that messenger and the messenger rides down to the post, which we call the pill box.

Inside the pill box there is a telephone. That is the only telephone we are allowed to use during an air raid. But sometimes the telephone lines get broken when a bomb hits the road. Then instead of just having to ride to the post and telephoning, we messengers have got to ride down to the control center. Sometimes it is a long way and sometimes it isn’t. In my case it is three miles; that’s three miles there and three miles back, maybe ten times in one night. Not only do we send one messenger but three minutes after the first messenger is gone we always send another one so if the first one gets bumped off the second one may get through.

The most complete account of Derrick Belfall’s actions that night appeared in the Chelmsford Chronicle, January 17, 1941:

In the six hour long air raid on Bristol early in December last Derrick Belfall took a message regardless of his own safety right through the worst danger area of the city with bombs dropping all around him. He got through with his message and he got back, his hands torn and bleeding. When told to go and rest, he said “No thanks”; please let me have a stirrup pump, I want to put out a fire that I passed down the road.

They told Derrick he was too exhausted to go out again, but the lad took a pump, slipped quietly out and succeeded by himself in getting the fire under control. A little later he rescued a baby from a blazing house.

He reported back at his post and found that telephonic communications had broken down, An urgent message had to be got through. Without a moment’s hesitation Derrick volunteered to take it. Out he went with enemy raiders overhead dropping bombs all along the route. He reached the Central Police Headquarters.

And then a bomb struck him down.

He was rushed to hospital dying “Messenger Belfall reporting – I’ve delivered my message,” he murmured. That was his last breath. Derrick Cecil Belfall died on active service aged 14 years 11 months.

After recounting Scout Belfall’s story and those of other scouts responsible for acts of bravery, the American Chief Scout Executive, James E. West, had this to say:

Of course, all of us hope that none of our Scouts will ever be called upon to face this type of emergency here in America, but it is my conviction that they are qualified to meet any situation in the same spirit.  Bear in mind that these boys are typical of Scouts in your own community, yes, in your own Troop.  That they probably had training no better than what you yourselves and your brother Scouts secured under your own Scoutmaster and other Troop leaders.  They were not specialists but were equipped with only such knowledge as is normally given to Scouts through our Advancement Program.  Yet how nobly these Scouts and Scout Leaders lived up to our Scout Motto “Be Prepared.”

Acknowledgment

I would like to thank Mrs. Rita McInnes, a neighbor of the Belfall family, for providing the photograph of Derrick Belfall, and also for providing the newspaper article quoted above.  The illuminated photograph containing Derrick’s last words hung for many years in the Belfall home, and I am grateful to Mrs. McInnes for preserving it and allowing me to share it.

 

 
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FM Radio Band Turns 70

Today marks the official 70th birthday of the modern FM band, although pinning down an exact date for its birth is a bit more complicated. On Friday, October 26, 1945, the FCC announced the official moving day of December 1, 1945, with normal programming on the higher frequencies to start on January 1, 1946. On that date, all existing FM stations were required to begin equipment tests on the new band, although there were already three FM stations operating on those higher frequencies. At the time, 600 applications were pending, and 64 applications had been conditionally granted.

The old FM broadcast band had been set at 42-50 MHz.  The new band was originally assigned as 88-106 MHz, two megahertz smaller than the current band.  The top two megahertz were originally assigned to facsimile broadcasters, although that assignment was never put into place.  There was also talk of extending the band down to 78 MHz, and many early receivers tuned 78-108 MHz.  Because of the transition, many early FM receivers covered both the old and new bands.

A number of stations had announced that they wouldn’t be able to meet the deadline, and the FCC had announced that it would be lenient for stations having justifiable equipment problems.

The entire story of the move to the new band could fill a book (in particular Man of High Fidelity by Lawrence Lessing or  Empire of the Air by Tom Lewis).  Much litigation and legal wrangling followed, which mostly served to further delay the widespread adoption of FM.  But if we need to set a birth date for the modern FM band, December 1, 1945, is as good as any.

References

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1937 Westinghouse Chairside

 

1937Westinghouse

This young woman is undoubtedly tuned in to a foreign shortwave broadcast as she shows off her 1937 Westinghouse chairside console. The seven tube set featured a slanted dial panel for easy chairside tuning. The accompanying caption in the November 1937 issue of Radio Retailing notes that the set also featured vertical grille pilasters to add a distinctive note to the cabinet. It tuned 540 kHz to 18 MHz and included a “precision eye” tube.

The magazine didn’t include a model number, and I wasn’t able to track one down. If you have more information on this set, please leave a comment below.

To get some idea of what signals she might have been trying to pull in, the August 21, 1937, issue of Radio Guide gives some ideas. The MacGregor Arctic Expedition was underway aboard the General A.W. Greely, en route to Fort Conger, Ellesmere Island. The NBC network was carrying updates, which originated from W10XAB, a 400 watt transmitter aboard the ship.

Another curious broadcast, which took place on August 17 is somewhat chilling in light of the fact that the Nazis were by then firmly in control of Germany and the stations in question. The German stations DJB and DJD were to “feature a special broadcast to the State of Minnesota. Just seventy-five years ago to this very day, the Sioux Indians made their last assault on New Ulm, Minn., founded by German emigrants from Swabia, from the old town of Ulm, famous for its cathedral. This event and more so, the quick reconstruction of New Ulm, are fine examples of the part which German settlers had in making Minnesota a prosperous and busy state. The station hopes listeners in New Ulm will be particularly interested in tuning in this broadcast.”

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Radio Scouting, 1919

1919Wilkins

According to the National Eagle Scout Association database, on this day 95 years ago, November 29, 1920, Scout Jack Wilkins  of 715 North Boulevard, Atlanta, a member of Troop 15, became an Eagle Scout.  This achievement was reported in the Atlanta Constitution, December 4, 1920.  This, however, wasn’t the first time this Scout had appeared in the newspaper.

In 1919, Mr. Wilkins, then 15 years old, was featured in Atlanta’s Sunday American, and the article was reprinted in the November 1919 issue of Radio Amateur News, with the photo shown here.

The article, entitled “Scout Jack Wilkins is a Young Marconi” reports that Wilkins had completed his station and was able to receive radiograms every night from Arlington, Key West, Florida, and other government stations, as well as ship stations along the Atlantic seaboard. His station, described as efficient and orderly, used a four-wire antenna. Since American amateurs were still off the air, the article reports that Wilkins was waiting impatiently for permission to “throw on the rotary gap and send 15,000 volts flashing into the air bearing his messages.”

I didn’t find any record of Wilkins holding a license in 1920, so it’s unclear as to whether he was able to unleash that rotary gap. The article reports that he was also working on a portable set to use in connection with scouting activities.

The article also identifies another scout from the same troop, Welsh Geeslin, who had operated a station before the war.

 

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1941 Dictator: The Ideal Gift for the Whole Family!

1941Dictator

By November 1940, Canada had been at war with dictators for over a year.  But this ad invited Canadians “in tune with the times, for Christmas, give a 1941 Dictator, the ideal gift for the whole family!”  This ad appeared 75 years ago today, in the November 28, 1940, issue of the Vancouver Sun.

At some point in the 1930’s, someone at the Hudson’s Bay Company department stores decided that “Dictator” would be a good name for their own brand of radios, most or all of which were manufactured by Dominion Electrohome Industries Limited of Kitchener, Ontario.  Presumably, they had a lot of nameplates printed up, so they continued to use them on early wartime models such as this one.

Both the six tube ($74.50) and eight tube ($94.50) featured pushbutton tuning, and both covered short wave, so I suppose both of them could, indeed, bring a dictator into your living room as you tuned the wartime shortwave bands to listen to the voices of Hitler or Mussolini.

 

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1943 One Tube AC-DC Regen

1943OneTubeACDCIf you were lucky enough to have in your wartime junkbox a dual triode such as the 6C8G, you could turn it into a regenerative receiver suitable for both broadcast and shortwave bands.  This circuit was sent in to the March 1943 issue of Radio Craft by one Leo Silber of Springfield, Mass., who appears to have been a high school senior at the time.  It used one half of the tube as a rectifier, with the other half serving as a regenerative detector. To deliver the filament voltage, the set used a 390 ohm “curtain burner” line cord. With four plug-in coils, the set would cover 500 to 15 meters.

Mr. Silber reported that the set pulled in signals from all over the world. His best DX was apparently logged before the War, KC4USB at Little America.  He doesn’t appear to have been licensed before the War, but the 1949 call book shows him as holding W1NRP.  A 1981 biography is available at this link.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

On this Thanksgiving, we look back to Thanksgiving seventy years ago, when America and the world gave thanks for final victory, as expressed by President Truman:

In this year of our victory, absolute and final, over German fascism and Japanese militarism; in this time of peace so long awaited, which we are determined wit all the United Nations to make permanent; on this day of our abundance, strength, and achievement; let us give thanks to Almighty Providence for these exceeding blessings.

We have won them with the courage and the blood of our soldiers, sailors, and airmen. We have won them by the sweat and ingenuity of our workers, farmers, engineers, and industrialists. We have won them with the devotion of our women and children. We have bought them with the treasure of our rich land. But above all we have won them because we cherish freedom beyond riches and even more than life itself.

We give thanks with the humility of free men, each knowing it was the might of no one arm but of all together by which we were saved. Liberty knows no race, creed, or class in our country or in the world. In unity we found our first weapon, for without it, both here and abroad, we were doomed. None have known this better than our very gallant dead, none better than their comrade, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Our thanksgiving has the humility of our deep mourning for them, our vast gratitude to them.

Triumph over the enemy has not dispelled every difficulty. Many vital and far-reaching decisions await us as we strive for a just and enduring peace. We will not fail if we preserve, in our own land and throughout the world, that same devotion to the essential freedoms and rights of mankind which sustained us throughout the war and brought us final victory.

Now, Therefore, I, Harry S. Truman, President of the United States of America, in consonance with the joint resolution of Congress approved December 26, 1941, do hereby proclaim Thursday November 22, 1945, as a day of national thanksgiving. May we on that day, in our homes and in our places of worship, individually and as groups, express our humble thanks to Almighty God for the abundance of our blessings and may we on that occasion rededicate ourselves to those high principles of citizenship for which so many splendid Americans have recently given all.

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1955 One Transistor Regen Using CK722

1955CK722Regen

1955CK722AdSixty years ago, the editors of Popular Electronics had been flooded with inquiries after one of the Carl and Jerry stories included a transistorized pocket broadcast receiver, in which Carl and Jerry commented on the size and sensitivity of the receiver. The story neglected to give the brand name, and readers wanted to know what it was. It turns out that the boys were talking about the Regency portable that was featured here previously.

The flood of inquiries convinced the editors that “transistors are here to stay,” and as a result, the November issue began a feature called “Transistor Topics.” It included the receiver shown above, which was sent in by one Mr. R. Zarr of Brooklyn, New York, a one transistor regenerative receiver for the broadcast band, using the venerable CK722 transistor, which was advertised in the same issue for $1.25.

As shwon, the set would tune about 400 kHz of the broadcast band, the exact center of which was determined by adjusting the slug of the coil. The set had about the same sensitivity as a good crystal set, the great advantage being very good selectivity.

The editors noted that by substituting a CK760 transistor, the set could probably be made to oscillate up to about 4 or 5 MHz.

1955CK722RegenSchematic

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1943 Code Oscillator and Regenerative Receiver

1943Regen

Amateur station licenses weren’t being issued during the war, but the FCC continued to conduct exams and issue operator licenses. And there was a big demand for operators, both in the military and commercially, so learning Morse Code would be an important skill in 1943, and the January and March, 1943, issues of Popular Mechanics carried companion projects to assist a student in learning the code. The January issue carried plans for a simple code practice oscillator using a 25A7GT tube which ran on 120 volt house current. The set was billed as a “safety code oscillator,” the safety feature being that both the filament and B+ were dropped down to 25 volts by use of a “curain burner” resistance line cord.

The writer, W9SFW, seems to have realized, however, that the setup wasn’t totally safe. Depending on how the plug was inserted, there was a 50/50 chance that the exposed “ground” connections on the exposed chassis were actually hooked directly to 120 volts. The solution was to plug it in the other way. In the case of the code oscillator, this would be apparent, since the oscillator would make noise even with the key up.

The March issue carried a simple one-tube regenerative receiver, using the same tube and many of the same parts. Since listening to actual code on the air was the best way to learn, this set would allow the builder to tune about 6-11 MHz, frequencies that would have been packed with CW signals during the war. The author notes that “once some code efficiency is obtained, listening-in on actual code signals is the best way to increase your code receiving speed and learn real message-handling procedure that will be of help in service training.

Since unlike the oscillator, the receiver would operate just fine even with the chassis “hot,” the article advises that the polarity of the cord should be tested and then marked. To test it, a light socket was hooked to one of the ground points, with the other side to an actual ground. If the bulb lit up, then the plug was the wrong way and should be reversed. With the correct polarity and the “curtain burner” cord dropping the voltage, the set would be relatively safe.

It should be noted that there’s really no safe way to build this set on an exposed breadboard without the “curtain burner” cord. Even though polarized cords are available, which are a step in the right direction, there’s another problem. One could use a sufficiently large 330 ohm resistor to drop the voltage, but one end of that resistor would still have 120 volts on it. If you do overcome that safety obstacle (by not leaving connections exposed), all of the parts required for this simple set should be readily obtainable. The set uses two variable capacitors, one for tuning and the other for regeneration. As discussed in the article, the exact values are not critical. The coil is wound on a cardboard form. The fixed capacitors are readily available, with the added bonus of the modern equivalents being much smaller than the 1943 versions.

The tube is a dual tube, and in both circuits, half the tube is used as the rectifier.

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Science Fair Idea: Homemade Microphones

1945Microphone0

For the aspiring mad scientist, young or old, the November 1945 issue of Popular Science shows how to make several homemade microphones.  If you’re a student looking for a science fair project, then building your own microphone is probably going to impress the teacher more than a homemade volcano.  While other kids might even put together electronic projects, it’s unlikely that very many of them will put together individual electronic components.  And since most people think of microphones as sensitive and complicated instruments, you’ll probably be the only one to think of it.  You’ll discover that most of them are quite simple to construct, although there’s no need for you to share that little secret with the judges.

1945Microphone1The first design, shown here and in the photograph at the top of the page, is simplicity itself.  It consists of little more than three nails, one resting precariously on top of the other two.  When struck by sound waves, the top nail vibrates, causing a slight change in resistance.

1945Microphone2The second design, shown here, is only slightly more sophisticated.  It is a carbon button microphone, and consists of carbon granules in a small container, such as the cap of a ketchup bottle.  As sound strikes the granules, the resistance changes.  This setup requires a slightly higher voltage, but will give you considerably more audio output.  The carbon granules can be obtained by cracking open a carbon-zinc battery (the cheap kind), removing the carbon rod in the middle, and crushing it up.  A double-button design is also shown for the advanced student.

1945Microphone3A homemade dynamic microphone is shown here.  It consists of a coil of wire mounted between two magnets.  When the coil moves as a result of sound, the microphone becomes a tiny electric generator producing an AC current in time with the sound.  Unlike the earlier designs, which simply varied the resistance, this one requires an amplifier to amplify the tiny current generated.  In 1945, this probably posed a bit of a problem.  But today, you can easily connect it to a cheap audio amplifier such as this one and get plenty of audio to impress the judges.  You can also simply plug the microphone into the microphone input of a computer.  Another variation of the dynamic mike, also described in the article, is the ribbon mike, which substitutes a thin ribbon of foil for the diaphragm.

1945Microphone4The final, and most advanced, microphone described in the article is shown here.  This is the piezoelectric or crystal microphone, which your teacher would probably tell you is impossible to make at home.  But your teacher is wrong, as shown by this 70 year old article.  You simply grow yourself a suitable piezoelectric crystal and arrange it as shown here.  While it might sound intimidating to grow a crystal, this is actually the same thing your less advanced peers are doing by making rock candy as their science fair entry.  Instead of using sugar to make the crystal, you use Rochelle Salt (potassium sodium tartate). Your chemistry teacher probably has a dusty bottle in the lab. If not, you can simply buy some on Amazon.  Like the dynamic microphone, this one is hooked up to an audio amplifier.

If you’re a student, your teacher is probably tired of homemade volcanoes, potato clocks, and other scientific curiosities that he or she has seen a hundred times before.  Your homemade microphone(s) will be most impressive.  And even if your school days are behind you, making these simple microphones will be quite rewarding.

 

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