I have been collecting and restoring valve and early transistor radios since the mid-80s. My interest began when I was given a Bush VHF80 set by a relative, and since that time I have repaired and restored over one hundred sets. My own collection currently consists of about 40 sets.

Pride of place goes to a Bush VHF61, which is the same type of set as my grandparents owned when I was a child. I now also have the same Philips L3G91T transistor radio as my parents owned when I was young (like many portable radios, it remained static on top of the 'fridge!). At long last I have a Perdio PR29 transistor radio, the same model (but not the same colour unfortunately) as my grandfather gave me when I was young. Just for good measure I have recently purchased a Grundig Party Boy 500, which is the same type as we had at the boarding school I attended in my teens.

I prefer smaller Bakelite and plastic post-war sets, partly because they are much easier to accommodate than larger wooden cased models. Consequently, much of the information on this website will be based on this type of set, because that area is where I have the most experience. I am also quite keen on early transistor sets, so a number of those are finding their way into my collection and onto this website. However a number of visitors have kindly contributed information and photographs relating to earlier equipment, so the coverage is widening.

For several years I worked as an electronics and software engineer for a local company called Dew Systems, who designed and manufactured specialist non-destructive testing equipment. I worked with this company since they started in June 1989, until they sadly ceased trading in April 2000.

I then worked for a disorganised and unprofessional software company in Leominster (who will remain nameless) for a couple of months, and was glad to leave them!

I then joined Thermo Electron in Gloucester, who manufacture x-ray thickness gauges for the steel industry, as an electronic design engneer. The company were formerly Daystrom Gloucester - the UK arm of Heathkit - but this line of business was sold off many years ago. I became ever more involved in the company's IT, and in late 2003 I officially became the site IT Analyst. The work was interesting - but I didn't appreciate the one-hour drive each way and hated getting up at 6am!

In September 2005 I started working for Insight NDT which is run by one of my former colleagues from Dew Systems. As of writing this I have not yet started, but the work sounds interesting and varied (electronics, software and IT), and it is less than 10 minutes drive from home.

I am 41 years old (born 29th July 1964), and live in Hereford, which is situated between the West Midlands and Wales, with my partner Markie and our cat Duke. In February 2000 we moved to a larger 3 bedroom house, which allows me to have an indoor workshop at last! It also gives us a guest room - and more space to display radios! The photo above is a few years old but I haven't changed much (apart from losing a bit more hair on top).

Markie does not share my love of vintage radio. His main interests are the Pet Shop Boys and gardening. Our new home has a much larger garden which was initially all lawn, so he has spent many hours transforming this. His first job was installing a pond. He works as a sales assistant for Woolworths in Hereford.

We have been on the Internet since 1996, and I launched the first version of this website within a few months. At around the same time Markie started his Absolutely Pet Shop Boys website. Within a couple of years these became too large and attracted too much traffic for the free space provided by our Internet provider, so we decided to do the job properly and purchase domain names and hosting for both sites.

A few years ago I wrote a number of articles, mainly constructional projects, for various electronics magazines. Unfortunately the Internet has largely killed off this type of publication, but there is still some interest in electronic projects, in particular by school and college students. For this reason, I put together a website containing many of my most popular and successful projects, called Electronic Projects Online. The projects are offered free of charge for anyone who wants to use them, but with no support or guarantees. Due to lack of time and excessive bandwidth use, I have now transfered the projects and domain name to the WebEE site, where the projects are still nicely grouped together (top section on the "Schematics" page).

I also wrote a series of magazine articles discussed the repair and restoration of vintage radios for ETI magazine, and this has formed the basis of the first version of the website you are now visiting.

I am on the committee of the British Vintage Wireless Society and attend the swapmeets in Wootton Bassett. I also regularly attend the National Vintage Communications Fair in Birmingham. Look out for my yellow Suzuki Ignis Sport in the car park - there aren't many of them around!

If you want to know more about me and Markie you may like to visit our Personal Homepage (NSFW). I also designed and maintain three on-line stores (Buy-Jeans, Buy-Levi's and King-Size) for a friend, as well as the BVWS and NVCF websites.

Anyway, that's more than enough about me. The rest of the website is devoted to our love of vintage radio. I hope you enjoy it.

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