Construction of Radio Equipment in a Japanese POW Camp

[paranoid dxer]

interesting reading

By Lieutenant Colonel R. G. Wells

Transcript of a recording by Lieutenant Colonel R G Wells, on the construction of radio equipment whilst in a Japanese Prisoner of War camp after the fall of Singapore.

     It was about the beginning of 1942 when I was a prisoner of war of the Japanese, --------

     BJ: The first question I would like to ask you is: What did you have in the way of tools, if any, and how did you connect the components of the wireless without, presumably, a soldering iron?

     RGW: No soldering iron, no solder of course, and no other system really available but to twist and wrap with some coconut oil paper, or cardboard or something, and very gently lift it. It was on a platen of wood we obtained somewhere; it was about a foot by a foot or something, so we just mounted the components on that. A meat skewer on the capacitor - oh, we had a capacitor too, a capacitor, a valve and a headphone, which were external to camp components we had. We didn't have any tools at all, except someone obtained the use of a sledge hammer - for what purpose I don't know because one of those would not be needed to escape; other than cutting up the soft iron of the fish plate which was about the only reason we needed anything, the rest were just twisted wires. We just wanted to get one usable because we didn't know whether it might be blown up or captured; we weren't worried, the main thing was initially a short term aim (as well as a long term aim) that it might last. Fortunately, it lasted for over a year - sixteen months until the arrests took place, but that's another story.

http://www.zerobeat.net/drakelist/powradio.html