The 81st Entry
RAF Halton Aircraft Apprentices
Sept 1955 - July 1958

ISSUE No. 4 - AUGUST 2005
81st ENTRY NEWSLETTER
Editor: Mike Stanley

'A Semi-Civvy?' by Mike Stanley The Continuing Adventures of......

I left the RAF in November 1968 and started as a trainee computer programmer with Plessey , working on a MoD contract , based at RAF West Drayton

It was strange to be out of the RAF but still working at an RAF station. Going through the main gate by the guardroom the duty snoop would say politely "Good morning Sir" and at first I would look round to see what officer was following me in , took me a while to be able to reply "Good morning Corporal" all nonchantly like. My first day I turned up in what I assumed would be the normal dress as worn in an office .Grey suit, white shirt , tie ,polished black shoes and shiny new briefcase, still smelling of leather. The room I entered seemed to be full of hippies, long hair, flared trousers , Zapata moustaches ,psychedelic shirts ,and probably the smell of cannabis,which I wouldn't have realised. There were also a brace of dolly birds with long blond hair, short skirts and long legs . We gazed at each other in amazement ,species from different planets.

I first worked with a team dealing with Secondary Surveillance Radar[SSR] and as I had just left the RAF my co workers assumed that I was all clued up on SSR. What I knew about SSR you could stick in your eye with enough room left for The Pyramid at Giza , The Leaning Tower of Pisa and a life sized statue of Julius Caesar. Luckily there was an ex RAF Sgt. radar fitter in the team so any/all questions he answered.

I got day release to do a two year City and Guilds computer course at Slough Tech.( which is now Thames Valley University so that is another I can put on my CV) , got a mortgage , bought a house ( and a dog) and settled in to become a civvy. I must have missed something from the RAF as I joined the Territorial Army as an infantry soldier in the 2nd Battalion The Wessex Regiment( At last I have come out of the khaki closet!) Later I moved onto another programming team that worked closely with computer engineers .They needed software tests they could run which would show up any hardware problems in various pieces of equipment, Marked Radar Displays; Labelled Plan Displays, Correlators and other bits of kit that I didn't have a clue about.

The programs were used to test the various logic paths through the equipment. Logic!!!! not a term often bandied about by armourers. Logic for we of the gun plumber trade was " if in doubt give it a clout" !

I wrestled with Boolean Algebra , Calculus, and other foreign languages, and lost , three falls and a submission! I was finally handed a project I could manage with my basic math skills. Test all the totes , mimics, and indicators, displayed on the various readiness/status boards in the System Control Room. Basically all I had to do was write a program that chuntered through the displays, switching on and off lamps ringing bells and blowing whistles, showing that each individual indicator was serviceable.By the time I had finished the program the engineers could have all the lamps flashing in unison ; one on and off at a time ; all on for a set time and then off ; ripple effect , with a selection of time delays, in fact practically any sequence of operations the engineer wanted.Had I thought about it I could have displayed a pattern making 81!

The program was run when visiting dignitaries were being shown the system , a sort of " son et luminere" Over time ,despite my best efforts, the contract was drawing to a close ; the better programmers and system analysts were being deployed to other contracts , leaving the dross ( me!) behind . I was given jobs not directly concerned with programming e.g writing a procedure for a card index system to keep track of updates on the 1000's of individual programs that ran the system ( all these programs were on reels of punch paper tape in a huge library) . The writing was on the wall when I had the job of writing a procedure for operating the office petty cash system . I could see the next job would be to write a procedure for writing a procedure, and then I would be out the back with the empties! Time to move on.

A new job meant a new location . My wife and I had been talking of moving back to The Land of Song(and rain) as she was from Cardiff and her parents were getting older and frailer. I tried to find a computing job in Cardiff ,wrote after several but never even got to an interview . I was inexperienced in the ways programming in the commercial field, but after SSR , NAND/NOR / AND/OR gates I'm sure I could have coped with stock control and pay rolls. One of the problems was that Plessey had built their own computers for the project and hadn't sold many{or even any}into the computer market. We used specialised low level and high level languages, none that were used in commercial systems. ( for the technical minded the assembler language was called XAL , developed by Plessey for their X range of processors, and the high level language was MiniCoral, which was a subset of Coral, developed in the States for real time radar data processing )

Time to change trades again so, swallowing my pride , I wrote off to Cardiff GPO Telecommunications to say that I had decided to give them the benefit of my expertise and when would they like me to start. They replied that they had no need of me , or my expertise , and to re apply in a years time . Consternation!

I then wrote for practically any job in Cardiff ; Rank Zerox, National Cash Registers ,Vendepac, any job that asked for service engineers. Interviews were few and far between and it became clear when I did get to an interview that the electro-mechanical systems that were at the heart of most bomb carriers and bombing control panels were no longer at the heart of cash registers or vending machines . I finally got an interview with Standard Telephone Cables who had a contract to wire the new telephone exchange being built in Cardiff. They were looking for wiremen to work on an initial two year contract and I reckoned that once down in Cardiff I would find something else when the contract ran out. I went down to attend the interview ( I was still working at Plessey and was taking days off my annual leave, I don't want you to think I was throwing sickies or the like)

It was quite an intensive interview procedure , there were about 40 of us and we did a series of tests; aptitude, maths, and English, with finally a one to one interview with a manager. It was during a coffee break that I overheard one of my fellow interviewees telling another that he had been turned down for a job with GPO Telecommunications the day before because he had failed their medical! That was enough for me , straight after the interview with STC had finished I rushed around to Telephone House, found that they had reopened recruitment ( thanks for letting me know!) got an application form, filled it out there and then and delivered it in person to the Personnel Dept, cutting out any middle man and delay.

I heard from them a week later and set up a date for an interview, another trip down the M4 to Cardiff . I landed up in front of a manager who started off telling me that he had 200 men working for him and that he knew them all by their first name. I thought that highly unlikely , unless he called them all Taff . He had done some time out in the Gulf , so we spent most of the time telling each other our war stories and swinging the lamp. The colour blindness test consisted of him showing me different insulated conductors and asking their colour. Obviously I passed(with flying colours?) as we armourers are not colour blind ( it is this fact that sets us apart from the common herd).

I then went to another room and had a very searching medical. All the usual , "fill this! " and "cough !" , but the doc was very keen to see if I had any back problem. He had me bending and stretching, touching my toes for some time( I think it was just my back he was interested in)

A week later I had an invite to join both STC and the GPO ; I plumped for the latter.