Portishead Radio
Thread Starter
Seems like yesterday.
My favourite Portishead story - Captain Tamblyn, heading south from Manchester in a 720, flew over his house near Leek, saw his son had turned on about 4kw of flood lighting to play football in the farmyard - thought he was safe to waste the lecci now dad had gone to work - wrong! The poor lad answered the phone to Portishead and a bollocking
My favourite Portishead story - Captain Tamblyn, heading south from Manchester in a 720, flew over his house near Leek, saw his son had turned on about 4kw of flood lighting to play football in the farmyard - thought he was safe to waste the lecci now dad had gone to work - wrong! The poor lad answered the phone to Portishead and a bollocking
I used them once to call the wife to tell her I had gone to work with her house keys and I was just hoping that she wouldn't give me a b*ll*cking for doing it ,with the world listening to every word!
HF Radio passing slowly into history. A system that never worked thatwell froma clarity point of view but oh so often the only game in town.
Mrs PB was an operator for Speedbird London HF back in the day, all kinds of requests from crews to phone wives and girlfriends (by same captains) -pass cricket scores, odd requests like pax leaving false teeth behind at airport and can they be looked after , unintelligable Braniff crews with Texan drawls and equally unitelligable JAL crew on the trans Siberian route who seemingly only knew the way point names and always seemed to use same the passing and expected times wherever they were. Gentler times
Mrs PB was an operator for Speedbird London HF back in the day, all kinds of requests from crews to phone wives and girlfriends (by same captains) -pass cricket scores, odd requests like pax leaving false teeth behind at airport and can they be looked after , unintelligable Braniff crews with Texan drawls and equally unitelligable JAL crew on the trans Siberian route who seemingly only knew the way point names and always seemed to use same the passing and expected times wherever they were. Gentler times
Portishead Radio were excellent for clear phone patches!
I used them once to ring a wedding reception at a pub in the UK, to pass on my best wishes to the bride and groom. Worked like a charm; at the time we were flying across Saudi Arabia from Muharraq to work with some Tornados from Tabuk in the run up to Gulf War One...
Only sour note was my (commissioned) Flight Engineer, who thought that it was such a jolly jape to listen in to peoples' private calls....
I used them once to ring a wedding reception at a pub in the UK, to pass on my best wishes to the bride and groom. Worked like a charm; at the time we were flying across Saudi Arabia from Muharraq to work with some Tornados from Tabuk in the run up to Gulf War One...
Only sour note was my (commissioned) Flight Engineer, who thought that it was such a jolly jape to listen in to peoples' private calls....
Join Date: Jan 2002
Location: ice station kilo
Posts: 200
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Ah, Portishead Radio; only 25 years or so ago, (but in telecoms, it feels like somewhere in mid Victorian era).
Only way to get comms to say you were on the way back; (well, let's face it, you had spent all your cash at the hotel bar, you weren't going to pay the extortionate phone rates too.); p.s. I wonder what the utilisation rates are for hotel room phones nowadays, must be infinitesimal.
One famous Nimrod story:
Our hero, (let's call him, Sam,) was using one of the MR2's mighty AD470s to let his girlfriend know he was returning, the conversation went something like this:
(Sam's Girlfriend) Hello.....
Portishead Switch from transmit to receive.
(Sam) Hello it's Sam, I'm on the aircraft, we are due back tomorrow night, over.
Portishead Switch from receive to transmit.
(Sam's Girlfriend) (not grasping the simplicity of simplex comms, is halfway through her reply....and the cat's been sick again, so you will have to take it round the vets..........
Portishead Switch from transmit to receive.
(Sam) Listen love, you have to say over when you have finished speaking and wait a bit after I say over, before you start speaking, Over.
Portishead Switch from receive to transmit.
(Sam's Girlfriend) F@#} OFF Sam......
Portishead Switch from transmit to receive.
(Sam) Listen love don't swear on the radio anyone could be listening, Over.
Portishead Switch from receive to transmit.
(Sam's Girlfriend) F@#} OFF Sam!! Burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Portishead Switch from transmit to receive.
(Sam) er Portishead Radio RAFAIR 1234 phone patch terminated Out.
I can't remember how the Portishead operator replied, but you could tell even over thousands of miles of nighttime static, that he was grinning from ear to ear. Unlike the VC10 fleet, we all knew that everyone on the jet with an HF selector would be listening; as well as god knows how many DXers and of course several Sig Int Ops.
Portishead used to run accounts linked to your home phone, with 10 preferred numbers so no telephone numbers were passed over the air. Funny how, if you had an ASCOT or RAFAIR C/S, the charges rarity made it onto the phone bill. They used to send much better frequency prediction tables out than the ones in the RAF FIH too; p.s. I've sent corrections to 1AIDU several times re the BBC World Service Freqs published in the FIH, They're years out of date.
Speedbird London gone, Portishead Radio gone, only civ air/ground player on HF in Europe now is Stockholm Radio, still work them from time to time.
Regards and thanks to any of the Portishead operators who read this thread.
Only way to get comms to say you were on the way back; (well, let's face it, you had spent all your cash at the hotel bar, you weren't going to pay the extortionate phone rates too.); p.s. I wonder what the utilisation rates are for hotel room phones nowadays, must be infinitesimal.
One famous Nimrod story:
Our hero, (let's call him, Sam,) was using one of the MR2's mighty AD470s to let his girlfriend know he was returning, the conversation went something like this:
(Sam's Girlfriend) Hello.....
Portishead Switch from transmit to receive.
(Sam) Hello it's Sam, I'm on the aircraft, we are due back tomorrow night, over.
Portishead Switch from receive to transmit.
(Sam's Girlfriend) (not grasping the simplicity of simplex comms, is halfway through her reply....and the cat's been sick again, so you will have to take it round the vets..........
Portishead Switch from transmit to receive.
(Sam) Listen love, you have to say over when you have finished speaking and wait a bit after I say over, before you start speaking, Over.
Portishead Switch from receive to transmit.
(Sam's Girlfriend) F@#} OFF Sam......
Portishead Switch from transmit to receive.
(Sam) Listen love don't swear on the radio anyone could be listening, Over.
Portishead Switch from receive to transmit.
(Sam's Girlfriend) F@#} OFF Sam!! Burrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Portishead Switch from transmit to receive.
(Sam) er Portishead Radio RAFAIR 1234 phone patch terminated Out.
I can't remember how the Portishead operator replied, but you could tell even over thousands of miles of nighttime static, that he was grinning from ear to ear. Unlike the VC10 fleet, we all knew that everyone on the jet with an HF selector would be listening; as well as god knows how many DXers and of course several Sig Int Ops.
Portishead used to run accounts linked to your home phone, with 10 preferred numbers so no telephone numbers were passed over the air. Funny how, if you had an ASCOT or RAFAIR C/S, the charges rarity made it onto the phone bill. They used to send much better frequency prediction tables out than the ones in the RAF FIH too; p.s. I've sent corrections to 1AIDU several times re the BBC World Service Freqs published in the FIH, They're years out of date.
Speedbird London gone, Portishead Radio gone, only civ air/ground player on HF in Europe now is Stockholm Radio, still work them from time to time.
Regards and thanks to any of the Portishead operators who read this thread.
Unlike the VC10 fleet, we all knew that everyone on the jet with an HF selector would be listening.
Bampton Castle, when asked, were actually very good at finding the best frequency for a specific location / time. I once asked them to find the optimum frequency for an inbound VC10K to call us 2 hrs pre-RV. It was 0-dark-00, we were at Akrotiri and he was over the south of France on his way to Australia during the 101 Sqn UK-Australia record trip.
They found us something weird in the 2 MHz range.
As clear as a bell came "Ascot XXXX, this is Ascot XXXX extimating RV at nn:nn" - in an "It won't work, but we'll indulge BEagle anyway" tone of voice - it was as though they were right next to us. When I replied, the co-pilot was clearly astonished that the link had worked perfectly.
Portishead were indeed excellent, but the Architect special frequency bods were too. A shame that few people bothered to use them.
Whereas it was easier to contact the dead than Cyprus Flight Watch...
Join Date: Jul 2000
Location: Up North
Posts: 225
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Portishead Radio
ZeBedie
What a wonderful story about DT. A name from the past that had escaped my fading grey cells. What an operator; I often wondered where his true vocation lay, flying v farming (managed to do both very well). Many years have gone by, is he still with us?
Rgds
The Moss
What a wonderful story about DT. A name from the past that had escaped my fading grey cells. What an operator; I often wondered where his true vocation lay, flying v farming (managed to do both very well). Many years have gone by, is he still with us?
Rgds
The Moss
Stop stop stop.........
.........and the Nimrod FE who couldn't stop his wife outlining in graphic detail what she was going to do to him as soon as he stepped through the door on return. Cue much hilarity down the back.
The Ancient Mariner
PS I never got a bill from Portishead either.
The Ancient Mariner
PS I never got a bill from Portishead either.
I can't speak for Cyprus Flight Watch (only spent a short while on it during the fracas in 1974) but certainly Muharraq was top notch. As I have related somewhere else I advised someone calling Uxbridge that I could relay for him, only to be advised he was a British Eagle Brit over the Channel so no probs (once I explained where I was).
As regards clarity, it was not unusual for us to be able to hear flights working from Upavon through Luqa then Cyprus, on to us and then to Gan and Singapore, all on the one frequency, so HF SSB wasn't that bad.
As regards clarity, it was not unusual for us to be able to hear flights working from Upavon through Luqa then Cyprus, on to us and then to Gan and Singapore, all on the one frequency, so HF SSB wasn't that bad.
Join Date: Sep 2006
Location: 59°09N 002°38W (IATA: SOY, ICAO: EGER)
Age: 80
Posts: 812
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
In the 1970s and 1980s a number of Merchant Navy Radio Officers, many of whom had served at Portishead Radio, joined GCHQ where their Morse skills were utilised.
Join Date: Jun 2018
Location: Burnham on Sea
Posts: 1
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Anyone interested in the history of Portishead Radio may like to visit the website www.portisheadradio.co.uk which features many photographs, video and audio files, as well as a section on the aeronautical radio service. Sadly long gone but a permanent memorial is being planned at the moment.
Arranged surprise 50th birthday party in a pub for Mrs D with some of her lady friends. She was . . . surprised . . . when during the proceedings I called the pub via a Portishead patch from over Nova Scotia to wish her Happy Birthday.
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Dunstable, Beds UK
Posts: 545
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Portishead was run by BT. My airline had an account with Portishead and Stockholm. I had a boat in the Med with HF. and named it with one of the aircraft call signs!
I used it all the time when afloat !
As everyone says what a great bunch of people there they were always very helpful. It all seems old hat now with full mobile and internet coverage !!
I used it all the time when afloat !
As everyone says what a great bunch of people there they were always very helpful. It all seems old hat now with full mobile and internet coverage !!
Join Date: May 2011
Location: Hampshire
Age: 76
Posts: 821
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
GTT: When I used to listen to Portishead, it was run by the GPO. BT was not yet a politician's dream.
While working in Jeddah, I frequently used to wake up at stupid o'clock and so often whiled away the time before brekky by listening to the likes of Portishead This was with a Barlow Wadley receiver, balanced on my belly, using only the in built telescopic aerial. Most of the traffic was merchant navy, with calls to wives and girl friends supplying most of the traffic. And bloody hilarious they could be!
While working in Jeddah, I frequently used to wake up at stupid o'clock and so often whiled away the time before brekky by listening to the likes of Portishead This was with a Barlow Wadley receiver, balanced on my belly, using only the in built telescopic aerial. Most of the traffic was merchant navy, with calls to wives and girl friends supplying most of the traffic. And bloody hilarious they could be!
