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You can tell this RAF transmitter is ancient, it employed glass valves and the photo came from a techno-museum. For my exam they removed the back casing to makes things easier |
Have you ever cheated? Not low-level stuff like a crossword puzzle, cheating when it really mattered. Big time.
Cheat 1. My training as an RAF air wireless fitter lasted eight months. Electronics from scratch; twenty-five exams, theoretical and practical. Fail an exam and you dropped back several weeks. Remaining on basic pay, without the single inverted stripe.
I was three-quarters through the course and keen to leave RAF Yatesbury, an enemy PoW camp during the war. The next exam was practical fault-finding, not one of my strengths. Faced with a dead transmitter I was asked to describe the sequence of steps needed to diagnose its problem. Sequence? Hmm. The little I’d learned about this basic skill had become a blur.
I cheated. Examined the device, found a wire that had been deliberately separated and the end tucked away. Referred to the circuit diagram, identified the wire, recognised the effect of its separation, devised the sequence BACKWARDS and recorded it FORWARDS for my answer. Alas, real electronics fault-finding isn’t this easy as I found out when I repaired truly defective radio kit.
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Heinkel three-wheeler. So short it hardly required a reverse gear. It carried two people... barely. The examiner and I were bulky and the mandatory hill-start was an ordeal for its 200 cc engine and - especially - its over-worked clutch. |
Cheat 2. I passed my UK car driving test in a Heinkel three-wheeler. I was legally allowed to drive a three-wheeler because I’d passed a motorbike test. But ONLY IF the three-wheeler had “no means of reversing”. The Heinkel had a reverse gear. I disabled reverse by screwing a plate over the appropriate gearstick slot. This was frowned upon but I reckoned I could argue it out if I was stopped for some reason. Prior to the car driving test I removed the plate.
Later, in the US, I took the much much easier US car driving test (in a four wheeler) and passed. Wiping out the earlier invalidity
My first car driving test. I was at Canterbury in the army doing National Service. It was 1957 suring the Suez crisis and learner drivers were allowed to drive unaccompanied due to fuel shortages. The car, a 1934 Ford 8 Y type, had a faulty passenger side door catch. I had wired the door closed so it would not fly open at will. I invited the examiner to enter the vehicle by the driver's door explaining the reason. Dubiously he complied, but the damned door did fly open at the first left hand corner. The examiner stopped the test (a failiure). I politely offered him a lift back to the centre but curiously he said he would rather walk, thank you.
ReplyDeleteI sold the wretched car soon after to the Education Sergeant at camp for about £30 (as an educated man he shoulod have known better). A week later I bought my first motorcycle, passed my test soon and so a lifetime's love of motorcycles was born. (I still have two at age 84).
Avus: All very well, but have you ever cheated at anything? A more interesting subject.. From a legal point of view I should not have been driving the Heinkel (prior to the test) because - despite my m/c licence and my bodging - the three-wheeler was, quite definitely, equipped with a means of reversing. What's more I was driving it in and around central London where the vehicle's size put me at a severe disadvantage when a preponderance of the traffic turned left and a squeeze was a distinct possibility. In fact London driving was a bit like taking an impromptu Advanced test, nothing could have been more demanding. An admirable preparation for driving through Paris in the Heinkel (to get to Versailles) and driving for two days in central Paris several years later, albeit on four wheels rather than three.
DeleteYour cheating had excuses I think. I can’t remember having cheated, but my memory could be fuzzy… I learnt my driving with one of my father’s friend who had a nightclub in Paris. He would teach me around the tiny Latin Quarter streets. I took my test in 1958 in a little 4 CV Renault. I tried to do everything right. Checked the side and back mirrors, release the brakes, but nothing happened. I had forgotten to turn the ignition on. But I still got my license!
ReplyDeleteVagabonde: Can't beat that, especially the Latin Quarter. The conclusion being if you can drive round Paris without suffering an incipient nervous breakdown you can drive anywhere. Mind you, was this before the Périphérique was created? That's the ultimate Parisian test. Joining what seems like a continuous wall of traffic on the expectation (desperate hope, perhaps) that a French driver - a Parisian driver, at that! - will back off fractionally to create a space in the wall that is only 6 in. longer than the car you are in. I have to confess I've sometimes added 50 km to journeys in northern France just to avoid the dreaded Péri.
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