Simon Nelson Interview

[Billy Cloutier]

I don’t know if anyone listened to the interview between Simon Nelson and Barry Fox on last night’s edition of PM, with yet more nonsense spoken about DAB.

Two issues that are never discussed in respect of this BBC marketing campaign are: 1) we are now witnessing the death of listening to the radio with a portable radio receiver. The current battery lifespan of the very expensive portable DAB’s is about 10 hours. I currently use a Sony portable walkman (cost a few pounds) with a single 1.5V cell and it last for so long that I can’t even calculate the battery life. The second – and probably more serious point – is that DAB is yet another nail in the coffin in respect of encouraging young people to become electronics and RF engineers. I built my first crystal radio at the age of 7 and also purchased Practical Wireless at a similar age. Graduated on to Wireless World at the age of 11 and then started to build TRF, Direct Conversion and double superhet receivers. It was the technical interest in radio that fostered an interest in listening to the radio (especially when spending long hours fault finding).

Whilst I don’t believe that analogue radio will ever be switched off, it won’t be possible for a child/teenager to build a DAB receiver and thus learn the basic principles of radio theory. The same applies to aerial design, because youngsters won’t bother investigating the shortwave bands and single sideband transmission.

[Lux Interior]

Dear Mr Cloutier,

I didn't hear the interview, but am interested in what you say.

I seem to remember a similar discussion a while ago on BBC board where someone expressed regret at the future inability of young potential engineers to take cars to bits and put them back together again, because of the prevalence of sealed units. At the time, I didn't grasp the importance of it, but now do.

I wonder, why is it not possible for youngsters to build a DAB receiver for themselves?

My brother, now an electronics engineer, started by building his own crystal set, and synthesizers, and all sorts of devices which no-one else in the family understood the function of, in his bedroom, with the aid of magazines, much as you did.

Do you really think that there is nothing exciting which children can build for themselves anymore? Surely there must be something? I am encouraged by the presence on the high street of shops which sell computer components - so there must be plenty of people around who want to build their own computers, if nothing else.

[Captain Nudnick]

There are certainly plenty of people building computers, for themselves and for others. In addition to the High Street shops, there are regular Computer Fairs, where people sell components of all kinds. But when I think back to the days of Practical Wireless, and my crystal set - it was different. No PCBs for a start - you got a piece of wood - mine was a cigar box (can you still get those?), and you screwed components, or the holders for components to it, and then you connected them up with lengths of wire that you soldered to tags ... some people wound their own coils... then with an aerial the length of your garden, and an earth connection to o your gas fire pipe - you could get the Light Programme - Jack Jackson!

Sorry... I almost drifted off into a reverie there...

[Billy Cloutier]

Lux said:

Dear Mr Cloutier,

I didn't hear the interview, but am interested in what you say.

Dear Mr/Ms/Dr./Professor/Nurse/Reverend/Captain/Inspector Interior

Thank you for taking the time to respond. It wouldn’t be possible for a youngster to build a DAB receiver for a number of reasons, the main one being they wouldn’t have the requisite equipment available (too expensive and complex) to set up the receiver. The principle of DAB transmission is also complex, so one wouldn’t expect a youngster to understand or grasp this.

We live in an analogue world and Captain’s posting describes perfectly the intellectual road map that one must follow when attempting to understand the principles of radio. In fact one can go all the way back to Faraday and Maxwell who followed the same investigative route(1).

In the case of the crystal set, one learnt about winding coils, tuning capacitors, resonant circuits, demodulation of an amplitude modulated signal, aerial and earth design. One would then graduate on to shortwave. However building a radio receiver to operate at VHF (very high frequency) was the radio equivalent of a child reaching puberty! Now DAB operates between 174Mhz and 240Mhz and the actual radio frequency techniques are already becoming complex, since an RF signal behaves in a different manner at these kind of frequencies, so one has to employ special techniques in respect of PCB layout etc.

Do you really think that there is nothing exciting which children can build for themselves anymore?

Well I’d say that it isn’t a case of nothing interesting to build, but more the lack of stimulation or impetus provided by parents and society to investigate the mysteries behind the technologies employed within our society. I’m not sure if this is a consequence of a maturing capitalist society, but I’d welcome your views on this subject. What I would say, however, is that the digital or building block society in which we now live, makes it difficult for a child or youngster to probe the fundamentals. The DAB receiver (and computer) is a classic example, as is modern auto technology with complex ECU’s and fuel injection systems. ‘Billy’s Bargain Banger’ and his trawl around scrapyards to fix it isn’t the kind of interesting story that one would read in a motoring magazine anymore. Jeremy Clarkson boasts about his ignorance of engines, yet he’s awarded an honorary doctorate for this ignorance. This really does illustrate how the world of academia has lost its way in the world of engineering.

Sincerely,

William Cloutier




Notes

(1) One of Maxwell’s favourite sayings as a child was: ‘what makes it a goer’?

[Crusoe]

Some interesting thoughts, William. I’m not sure if the growth in DAB san be put entirely at the BBC’s door. Obviously they are plugging it a lot but I think that they are required to by the government (presumably because DAB means more stations and more broadcasting licences and so more revenue for HM government). Although it is being marketed heavily by the Beeb, the new technology is there and so it is likely that it will gain some popularity anyway (if only as a result of manufacturers deciding that there is more money to be made from it).

I certainly take your point about how power-hungry DAB radios are – I’m staggered by how quickly they use batteries and, consequently, I hardly ever use my DAB radio as a portable. Just as well I have a couple of “proper” radios, still.

I don’t know what the answer is for getting youngsters interested in building their own electronic projects. I suppose a DAB radio receiver could be assembled but from large, ready-made components which would provide no insight into what was happening in the equipment. I suppose this is the way with most advanced technology: no one person understands all of the workings of a piece of equipment, it being put together from a number of individual components which are integrated by a systems engineer/ designer. All the same, with the right encouragement and reading material (or audio or video resource) and access to the right components, I’m sure that constructing simpler projects (such as a good, old fashioned, radio) could interest young people and give them the satisfaction. The thrill is not in being at the cutting edge but in making and achieving something for yourself. I remember when I first built a circuit to switch a light bulb on, I found it very satisfying, despite the fact that it was so basic.

Billy said:

Well I’d say that it isn’t a case of nothing interesting to build, but more the lack of stimulation or impetus provided by parents and society to investigate the mysteries behind the technologies employed within our society. I’m not sure if this is a consequence of a maturing capitalist society, but I’d welcome your views on this subject.

I think that this is a very important statement. I suspect that there are a number of issues:

We now have greater access to more media so they now have a greater effect on our lives. There is little interest in technical matters shown in the media and it is likely that these attitudes are reflected in society as a whole.

Parents do not have the same “quality time” to spend with children as they used to, due to working commitments and so on.

Junior schools now routinely set homework. If a child is already doing further study at home for school, it is unlikely that they will then do further study “off their own bat”.

We are more affluent, generally, than we were, and consumer goods are cheaper than they were say, 25 years ago. There is less need to try to fix things when they go wrong: instead we would expect to throw them away and buy new products, so a young person does not see the insides of machines and people fixing them. This is exacerbated by the fact that so much equipment is so complex that it is impossible to fix without specialist equipment.

There are, no doubt, other reasons as well, but these are the first that occur to me.