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Net Work Alan Winstanley This month’s feature continues our 60th anniversary celebration with a historian’s look at the life of F.J. Camm. Also, one year after upgrading his home network power supply protection, the author brings disappointing news of failure! I the English city where F.J. Camm was raised. Mr. Cullingham researched the life and works of ‘F.J.’ in great depth, and his appraisal offers a detailed insight into what made F.J. tick, and how his passion for practical pastimes evolved, starting from his boyhood. Readers are regaled with many fascinating facts about F.J. that have probably passed unnoticed in our own hobby electronics arena. We are told that his grandparents were actually named “Cam”, but misspellings on some Royal Association certificates saw the surname “Camm” printed instead. The family liked it so much that the name stuck. After reading Mr. Cullingham’s book, I suspect that there is probably a little bit of “Camm” in all of us, for F.J. exemplified those traditional British qualities of ingenuity, industriousness and inventiveness. We learn how, as a young boy, he became interested in aircraft and the prospect of manned flight in machines that were heavier than air. A local talk brought news of a historic first ‘full circle’ powered flight in 1904 by the Wright brothers in the USA. According to the book, the talk held in Windsor was presented by Patrick Alexander, a distinguished English aviation enthusiast and balloonist who knew the Wright brothers personally. His own fascinating life is portrayed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Patrick _Young_Alexander As the Camm family lived in Windsor, on the same road as the talk’s venue, the historian speculated that some of the exciting news of the Wright brothers’ flight probably reached the ears of a 10-year-old F.J. Camm. It also seems likely that F.J. Camm’s elder brother, Sydney, An appraisal of F.J. Camm’s life, privately published was captivated by early drawings of the Wright brother’s by the late Gordon G. Cullingham of Windsor. biplane. Sydney Camm would eventually go on to design the Hawker Hurricane, the formidable fighter aircraft that really won the Battle of Britain, although the more glamorous Spitfire received most of the credit. Wikipedia has more on Sir Sydney Camm at https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Sydney_Camm and a blue commemorative plaque appears on the Camm family home, a non-descript row of Victorian terraces in Windsor that can be seen today at https://maps. app.goo.gl/sFChp6EA8qaWgmRr6 At the start of the 20th century, not only were early radio and electro­ mechanical devices capturing the hobbyist’s imagination, but airships and aeronautics were as well. Plans and kits for model airplanes were being snapped up by those keen to harness the principles of flight, albeit on a modest scale. Mr. Cullingham’s book explains in great detail Camm’s fascination with model gliders, airships and aircraft of the era. He would become a gifted designer and illustrator; it is thought that he introduced expensive balsa wood (actually classed as a hardwood) from the USA for the first time, which greatly facilitated the construction of lightweight model gliders. F.J. also wrote numerous handbooks and columns in periodicals in the 1920s for publishers such as Cassells, Pitmans and George Newnes, on topics like model aircraft, propeller design, mechanical projects and much more besides. The advent of Morse code wireless transmission doubtless piqued his interest too, notably when the Titanic was lost in 1912. A Marconi telegraph boy named Owen Allum had perished on the Titanic. He was originally from Windsor and, highly unusually after the catastrophe, his remains were duly repatriated to England, so “all Windsor knew of the tragedy”, as George Cullingham wrote. There is more background on this at https://windsorlocalhistorygroup.org/ drowned-at-sea-owen-george-allum/ F.J. Camm would eventually have to learn Morse code when applying for a radio license anyway, which probably 4 Practical Electronics | December | 2024 hope that readers enjoyed last month’s retrospective feature celebrating 60 years of Practical Electronics magazine. I described how a range of popular ‘Practical’ magazines sprang up to meet the needs of post-war householders, mechanics and hobbyists who eagerly tackled hands-on projects or home repairs with great enthusiasm. The magazines owed their existence to the unswerving dedication and the devotion of one particular Editor, the legendary Frederick James Camm, who worked for George Newnes. I’m delighted to say that I have managed to obtain a copy of a rare book entitled “F.J. Camm, The Practical Man 1895–1959” written in 1996 by the late Gordon G. Cullingham. My second edition reprint is autographed and numbered 38 of a 100-copy print run, and it will undoubtedly have pride of place in my collection. Mr. Cullingham was a respected local historian and highly-regarded president of the Windsor Local History Publications Group, Windsor being Hurricane force worth noting that prices vary considerably, and mint condition copies sell at a premium. The Windsor Local History Group provides considerably more information about the late George G. Cullingham on their website at the URL: https://pemag.au/link/ac1s Feeling powerless F.J. Camm’s more ambitious designs included a 1936 timber-chassis car that almost anyone could build for under £20, or so he claimed. coincided with his interest in early radio design. In Newnes’ Practical Mechanics of April 1936, he offered a design for a “£20 car”, a single-seat three-wheeler contraption with plywood chassis, powered by a 500cc motorcycle engine that “can be built by any amateur with limited tools”. A four-wheel, two-seater ‘Midget’ car followed in 1937, and his practically-minded followers had no problem puzzling out adaptations for brakes, suspension, axles and the like. Gradually, all these elements of hands-on engineering, theory, inventiveness, design, drawing and publishing skills gained in aeronautics, mechanics and radio would form the core of F.J. Camm’s unrivalled portfolio of practical expertise and know-how. Camm was also highly defensive of his work, and he did not shy away from using brutal litigation to uphold his reputation. His work was sometimes pirated and the outcome of several legal cases are described in the book. A heavy smoker, he died from bronchial pneumonia in 1959, aged 63. Newnes itself eventually became an imprint of Butterworth-Heinemann, publishers whom I met in Oxford in the 1990s, and Newnes ‘Pocket’ books became a standard fixture on many engineers’ and hobbyists’ bookshelves and work benches at the time. Punctilious punctuation I described last month how, in 1964, Practical Electronics was spun out of the long-established title Practical Wireless. In December 1977’s PE, the magazine’s founding Editor Fred Bennett bade farewell to PE as the magazine was relocating from London to Practical Electronics | December | 2024 Poole in Dorset. Both he and Dave Barrington, the production editor, would stay behind in London to work on sister title Everyday Electronics instead. Dave, who started his career working for Newnes as a 15-year old ‘copy boy’ (an inter-office errand boy), was especially saddened by the move, and he wrote in his final ‘Market Place’ column that he was the sole remaining editorial staff member of the Practical group of magazines who had worked with, and was trained by, F.J. Camm himself. In the years that followed, I would often have a discussion with Dave over an errant full-stop or apostrophe that his eagle-eye had spotted in my own material, and so I gradually refined my manuscripts mindful of such minutiae. I am sure that Dave’s quest for correctness and accuracy was a direct result of F.J. Camm’s influence. This meticulouslyresearched history book includes reprints and snapshots of magazine milestones too numerous to cite here, but F.J. was undoubtedly the father of technical book and ‘practical’ magazine publishing in Britain, and his influence was profound and enduring. If you would like to learn more about his life’s work, F.J. Camm, The Practical Man 18951959 (A4 format, 100pp, ISBN 0 952 8448 0 X) is a very thorough and unmatched resource. It was privately published, but copies of the limited 100-run reprint occasionally appear online at AbeBooks, eBay and Amazon. It’s This morning’s email started with one generated by my Synology NAS, complaining once again about an “improper shutdown”. A year ago, in the December 2023 issue, I described some options for small uninterruptible power supplies (UPSs) that could, in the event of a power glitch, safeguard typical home IT equipment such as routers or modems. My main PC and dual monitors already utilise a bulky Salicru-brand fan-cooled 1.2kW UPS containing 24V sealed-lead acid batteries. It allows plenty of time for files or programs to be shut down gracefully, hopefully averting the risk of file or disk corruption if the power fails unexpectedly. A typical UPS has multiple IEC-style mains outlets to power a few small peripherals, but I’m not keen on the idea of leaving a hefty UPS running unattended continuously in a semi­ domestic environment. Some compact DC supplies are sold that contain a Li-ion battery instead, which I felt would be more appropriate for protecting small network peripherals like my Synology NAS, modem, router and five-port switch. The iPower-H by Power Inspired (https://www.powerinspired.com) is a device I described last December. It is Newnes Pocket Books were a common sight on hobbyists’ and engineers’ bookshelves to the 1990s and beyond. 5 The author’s two remaining compact UPSs are used to keep the network running during a power cut. They are compatible with equipment powered by 9V, 12V or 24V DC. a mains adaptor style UPS containing a 3.6V 18650 battery that supplies 12V in the event of a mains outage (see Net Work, December 2023). Alternatively, the iPower-DC2 is a paperback book-sized UPS with a Liion battery that fits in between the equipment and its mains adaptor. It has five DC outlets that can be set for 9V, 12V or 24V (to match the voltage of the ITE’s mains adaptor). You can expect up to 20-30 minutes or more of protection, depending on the load. I also wrote how I’d grappled with different DC plug sizes, adaptor leads and Y-splitters to accommodate a motley range of connectors. I found that most (but not all) gear uses 5.5mm outer diameter, 2.1mm inner diameter barrel plugs for low-voltage DC power these days. However, some barrel connections and adaptors fit together very poorly and can fall apart at a whim, causing more problems. Having suffered the cost last year of restoring my Synology NAS following a string of power cuts, I configured it to remain powered down after a power failure. My cunning plan would safeguard my home network against any more outages, or so I thought... I complained to Northern Powergrid, my electricity supplier, about the damage wreaked by power cuts and received, as one would expect, their boiler-plate response disclaiming all liability. To add insult to injury, they added that “manufacturers should build their equipment to withstand power cuts”, so it’s all our fault anyway. Several times during this year, I then received email alerts from my Synology noting that “Diskstation was shut down improperly” and when I checked, the disk drives had indeed powered off completely. Oddly, though, the DC2 UPS that powered the NAS had switched itself off as well. I knew its battery was OK because I could switch it on again manually. I took this up with the manufacturer, who agreed that the UPS should comfortably supply the 25W <at> 12V needed by my Synology. My NAS only has two disks, whereas they used four drives needing twice the power in their testing. A NASty problem Eventually, the problem was blamed on the NAS itself. The theory was that an inrush surge possibly overloaded the UPS when the current was switched from ‘straight through’ mains power to battery power instead. The makers state that the UPS would shut down automatically if it sensed an overload. Yet I couldn’t replicate my problem by plugging or unplugging the NAS supply to feign a power cut; the Synology carried on running as it was supposed to. With no solution or workaround available, I’ve written off that idea as something that should have worked ‘on paper’ but didn’t in practice. The NAS is now mains-powered again. My mood didn’t improve when the 12V adaptor-style iPower-H used on my router started flashing angrily when I simulated another power outage. The router powered off and the UPS stopped working, too. I discovered that the removable (once you know how) 18650 (18mm diameter, 65mm long) 3350mAh cell had failed after less than a year. My confidence dented, I abandoned that idea as well. The two iPower-DC2 supplies that remain now power the 12V DC router and modem, with 9V DC powering a TPLink mesh unit and a five-port switch. I sourced another Zolt DC 34W mains adaptor, set for 12V, from Amazon as before (https://pemag.au/link/ ac1r). This set-up seems to run happily and the network has kept running through several power cuts. One problem I can’t overcome is that my TP-Link Tapo smart bulbs light up once electricity is restored. Several times, they were found to have been blazing all night after a power cut! Such uncertainty is another reason I won’t ever trust any brand of smart socket to operate power-hungry appliances or whitegoods. Next month, I’ll take a nostalgic look at a British product that changed the hobby electronics scene for ever. It’s the ‘balsa wood’ for electronics constructors, but what was it really? As always, you can reach the author at alan<at>epemag.net PE 1550ZF IP68 flanged die-cast aluminium Learn more: hammondmfg.com/1550zf uksales<at>hammondmfg.com • + 44 1256 812812 6 Practical Electronics | December | 2024