Watson's Radio Club

1941 - GM2AIK Gordon Rankin's Memories

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Gordon Rankin ~1990

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Gordon Rankin left Watson's in 1941 and had a distinguished career with the BBC Engineering Division including BBC Edinburgh and BBC World Service. These notes are taken from e-mails received from him in 2011. He died in 2014. There are also some comments from Brian Flynn GM8BJF, whose family were friends of the Rankins.

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Before the war, Gordon remembers Mr Lyall, his Physics master, giving him enthusiastic help with simple receiver construction, although he doesn't mention an actual radio club.. He obtained his AA (Artificial Licence) callsign 2AIK for experiments with transmitters using a dummy load and not to be connected to an aerial. From August 1939 until the end of the war it was illegal to have a transmitter and all gear, including Gordon's, was confiscated by the GPO, to be returned after the war.

 

He particularly remembers the "Crafts" master Ben Dunbar with whom he got on very well. He taught him Engineering Drawing almost at a personal level which helped him enormously in his early professional life.

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On leaving school in 1941, Gordon immediately went to the BBC transmitter at Redmoss, just outside Aberdeen before entering the services.

 

Gordon mentions war service until 1946 but without any details. Brian recalls Jack Wilson GM6XI (SK) recounting stories of Gordon being parachuted into enemy territory with radio kit and transmitting back.

 

On returning to civilian life in 1946 he spent about a year in Edinburgh . It was during this short period that he applied for and got his old AA callsign 2AIK upgraded to a full licence with the prefix GM. In 1947 he moved south to the BBC's 150kW Tx at Stagshaw in Northumberland. He had of course to drop the M and became the simple G2AIK ("not so sought after by DXers as the prestigious GM") and was quite active for a while. In his career he was involved with the construction o the BBC's Medium Power TV Tx network travelling and working as far afield as Meldrum in Aberdeenshire, the Channel Islands and Belfast, not to mention a number of other locations. Unfortunately at that time he lost his interest in Amateur Radio  and as he said, "became a silent key" - fortunately without capital letters!

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Most of Gordon's career was spent south of the border apart from about 5 years in the 1960s when he returned to Edinburgh as Engineer in Charge of BBC Edinburgh. It was then that he got to know the Flynn family. Brian remembers that he and his dad built a TRF radio from a Henry's Radio kit that he got on a London trip. "We could not get it to work and Gordon Rankin took it and sorted it. It had the distinction, I believe, of having the (Edinburgh) 647kc/s (as it was then) medium wave 3rd Programme transmitter switched on specially to test it!" It was this same transmitter that caused your scribe to write to BBC Edinburgh to report that it was transmitting spurious sidebands, to receive a very nice letter (which he still has, and treasures - see below) by reply from Gordon Rankin, thanking him and indicating that they were working on it! 

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