MonoMonday: A Favourite Thing

"Earlier on blip..." ...I once blipped a photo of an audio amplifier I built as a student - that means many years ago! I also blipped a mock-up of making it much more recently.

Well, Trisharooni is hosting MonoMonday this month, and her chosen challenge for today is "A Favourite Thing". Of course, my Favourite "thing" is my Editor but I won't embarrass her by blipping a photo of her. And naturally one of a blipper's favourite things must be their camera or phone camera, or at least the action of taking their blips.

But as you'll know from those previous blips (and no doubt others) one of my favourite things is being a geek. Today I popped up to the attic (side effect: extra indoor exercise during lockdown, going up the stairs) and amazingly I was able to find (remarkably quickly amongst all the clutter) the issues of "Practical Wireless" magazine which contained the circuit diagram and the construction instructions. As you can see from the date on the magazine it was a "little while" ago! (I was actually still at school when this issue of the magazine was published...I didn't become a uni student until 1971 and that's when I built the amplifier.)

Practical Wireless was one of my favourite things in those days: I had a subscription to it for some years, although this was the only major project I undertook from its pages. (I'm amused at the price - for young blippers, 2/6 was equivalent to 12 and a half pence.)

A couple of the components for the amplifier were a little tricky to get in those (very) pre-internet days. Happily however I discovered that the author of the article ran a little electronics store in Sunderland, just 15 miles away.  So I remember speaking nicely to my Mum, borrowing her car and tootling over there. Of course we didn't have Google Maps in those days but I managed to find my way there with the A-Z atlas. Those were the days...!