Weekly meeting

Don explained that his career in telecommunications and the media was based on a fascination with radio in his youth. He built his own crystal and other radio sets, and was captivated into listening to broadcasts from all around the world. In this he was helped by his father who was also a “Radio Ham” as it was called at the time, and in modern parlance Don described himself as, “Probably a bit of nerd by the time I got to secondary school”.

However his real fascination was listening to the start of the space exploration programme in the 1950s and 60s. These ventures, both Russian and American, were broadcast on normal commercial wavelengths and could be listened to by anyone with a reasonable receiver who knew where to look. He particularly remembered the first Russian “Sputnik” in 1957, Leica the dog on its one way mission into space, and Yuri Gagarin on Vostok 1. Don listened to all of these from his home.

He went on to describe other space missions like that of Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space, the flights of Alan Shepherd and John Glen, and the first Russian mission to the far side of the moon. Don remembered the foundation of NASA in 1958 and was especially moved by President Kennedy’s commitment to put an American on the moon by 1970. All of these memories were recently brought back by the fortieth anniversary of that event.

Not surprisingly Don is fascinated by space and takes every opportunity to visit sites connected with its exploration. He specifically cited the British Space Museum in Northampton and the European one in Toulouse. As his work took him to many other parts of the world, he was able to visit them all, such as the Russian Space Museum in St Petersburg.