Trade Chat City & Guilds Radio & Television Engineering

The City and Guilds Radio and TV Servicing course I studied in the late 60's was course No 48, it lasted 5 years, day release, so fitted well with the length of an apprenticeship.  After the first 3 years you sat the Intermediate exam, first theory, and then (providing you'd passed the theory), you sat a radio servicing practical diagnosis test.  Once you'd completed all this, you had reached the heights of being ready to repair radios.  TV took you another 2 years, and at the end of this you sat the Final examination, followed, conditionally by the TV practical.  I believe the practical tests were RTEEB rather than C&G run, they certainly were later and at that time I acted as a freelance examiner for the now renamed EEB. The course literature was college based (Bath and Bristol for me), with many references to G N Patchett's Radio and TV servicing books.  We covered valve and transistor theory, plus both 405 and 625 TV. Year 6 was the C&G Colour Television Principles which made reference to Geoffrey Hutson's incomparable 'Colour Television Theory' book and if you still wanted more, then the (optional) year 7 was Advanced Colour Television Techniques, a fantastic course which was created at the college I attended by my mentor Mr E Davis.  This course was adopted by the C&G. These were exciting times, when UK colour sets were cutting edge and those of us attending college at that time were very fortunate to receive training in a whole gamut of technologies which would equip us for a lifetime in the Trade.  45 years on, I have my own small business, servicing just about everything AV, ancient and modern.  And I still love it, just as I did as a youngster!  Back then, Brunel Tech College at Bristol offered many electronics courses which could blend in to the above, including C&G VCR servicing, Industrial electronics, Teletext, college based Analogue and Digital techniques, to name just a few! These are just my abbreviated personal memories, I wonder what the experiences of others were? Very best wishes to all.

My course was City & Guilds 224 with TEC level I, II and III (1977-1980). I was lucky in the fact that I had O level Maths, Physics and Technical Drawing. I went to WR Tuson Collage Preston. On the first day 3 of us were called into the Principals office (Jack Berry) and made an offer of doing both year 1 and year 2 C&G 224 and year 1 TEC Electronics in the same year. This was of course full time and meant some extended days and no free periods. I absolutely loved it! At the end of that year I had year 1 & 2 C&G and year 1 TEC Electronics. The next year I did C&G year 3 and TEC level 2 part time. The Electronics in TEC directly credited you for C&G (mostly electronics principals and maths). TEC Electronics was to a much deeper level than C&G and much more mathematical. I did the Radio-TV servicing sections which then gave you the full City & Guilds credits. After 2 years had the full City & Guilds level 3 certificate for Radio and Television servicing. There was a practical soldering test each year as well as the end of year exams and the Practical Trade Test at the end of year 3 which involved in my case an Ekco Valve Radio a Thorn 1590 TV, not forgetting your "Cold Chassis Tests" all results which had to be recorded.  

The principal called me into his office at the end of the third (second) year and told me to sign up for both the 4th and 5th years together as I should have no problem doing this. He gave me a letter where he explained I had to give this to the course supervisor if they would not let me do both years together. The 4th and 5th years were "Television Colour and Monochrome" and "Advanced Colour Television" which you had to attend Preston Polytechnic. I did sign up for both years and evening classes at Tuson for TEC level III Electronics. After 3 years (1 year at Polytechnic) I had the full level 5 certificates all with distinctions and TEC level III Electronics. I absolutely loved it! I could go back to my workshop after each days lessons. and really start to understand what I was doing after years of messing about with old radios and televisions. The course books (C&G) were Patchett Radio Servicing Vol. 1 to 4, Television Servicing Vol. 1 to 4, Patchett Colour Television with particular reference to the PAL system and Hutson's Colour Television Theory. For TEC there were many books on Mathematics for Technicians, but the main book was the Foundations of Wireless and Electronics by M. G. Scroggie in my case the 9th edition.

  I stated on my own after the first year doing repairs and selling reconditioned sets which were single standard Philips G6 and GEC 2040 chassis sets. Started to service Philips 1500 VCRs in my second year of C&G which was a steep and interesting road to take but one of the biggest lessons you have to learn about is people! now there is a story!

After this I left Preston to join the BBC as a Technical assistant at Television Centre London. I have worked for Sony, Telefusion, Thames Television, BSB then Sky. Still do bench engineering, love every minute of it and would recommend anyone with an interest in electronics to go down this route. I still have most of my City & Guilds college notes up in the attic somewhere, must dig them out. If this is something you would like to do then start with the books mentioned above, they come up from time to time.

That's my experience

Hurty

Hi Adrian,

thanks for the wonderful insight into your experiences of the C&G training, all very interesting. It confirms pretty much what others have said, that the main course reading material is Patchett 1-4, Hutson and R&TS. The first two mentioned are in the data library and I have a complete set of R&TS from post war to 1983. You might be interested to know a while back I was contacted by Mr Hutson's son, his father is still alive and bright as a button. I think he would be very pleased to know there are still many people old an new still finding his work invaluable.

My CGLI was course 48 with the colour principles, very similar to DeccaTech, started in around 62 finished in 69, leaving school at 15 we had to do a starter course before enrolling on the C&G or L&CI courses, thats the reason for 7 years, 5 for radio and TV plus another for colour.

This was at Bolton tech then Wigan, the first 3 years at Bolton they were Starter, 2 years Lancashire and Cheshire Institute exams, I then moved employer and to Wigan to take the C&G intermediate and later Final and Colour, Intermediate practical at Wigan and the Final practical at Riversdale college Liverpool

As far as I recall, Wigan did not have a further colour course like the one Deccatech took, they started with course 224 early in the early 70's.

I always felt that year doing the starter was a waste but those were the rules, at least it was radio related, some starter courses were nothing to do with the subject matter. 

Stayed repairing TV's etc until around 1980-81 and then went repairing mini computers, best thing for me, more money, better working environment, more holidays and travel etc. Last job at a FE college in the Tech services Dept, i.e.looking after the computers/servers/network etc. So 4 jobs in going on 50 years of employment.

Thoroughly enjoyed working in the TV trade but for whatever reason it was a struggle to make ends meet, and we were not an extravagant family. Perhaps I should have worked for myself but the path I took worked out very well. Now retired.

Frank

My course ran for 3 years on day release and it was the City & Guilds 224 in elecroinc servicing. I don't know when this course stopped, but it must of been near the end of its run. I think this is what we did, but it was a while ago now! I dont remember having any books for the course, but there was usually photocopied worksheet/handouts for every class or we had to copy stuff down from the blackboard. The worksheets would usually be information about the current subject, questions about what we had just been taught in the class and sometimes past exam questions also about what we had just been taught. These sheets were either typed or hand written. Sometimes there would be a hand drawn circuit or an excerpt from a manual. The first year (90/91) was electronics principles and systems. This covered both analogue and digital electronics quite a lot of theory, but with some practical classes and these covered things like soldering, building circuits on vero board, making PCB' by hand and cable lacing etc. (there are probably many more but I cant remember). I think also after this year you had to choose if you wanted to go in to more digital systems or continue on the sevicing side. Year two (91/92) was getting more in to the servicing side of things and covered radio and television principles and a bit more of electronics. I think we were now having a practical lesson most weeks and we were given real radio's to look at and set up or fault find on. Year three (92/93) was more on televison (colour) and video recorders. This was the most interesting to me. We were working with Ferguson TX9's, Philips CF1's and Ferguson 3V16's. As I was already working for a small shop, I was seeing these sets quite a bit in the real world. At exam time I think we were assessed on course work, a written/multiple choice eaxm paper and a practical exam. The practical exam was where various faults were put on to the above TV's and video recorder. I think we were given an amout of time on each set and had to write down/describe what the fault was, as it was presented to you and then you had to write down your process of fault finding (noting down voltages etc) and end up with the faulty component. I cant remember if we allowed to actually fix the fault to prove you got it right or not, as there was a class full of people moving round from set to set, so there probably wasn't time. You were marked on all parts of this process so even if you did not find the fault you still got marks for your workings. We were using AVO's, Hameg scope's and had a Philips PM5508 as a signal generator and the analogue TV service was still running. I found some of my certificates. I must have some more somewhere, but they could be anywhere now!

 Thanks Jon and others, personally I find this all very fascinating and love the insight you guys are all providing. Nice to see the certificates, that's the first time I've seen them.

crustytv said
 Thanks Jon and others, personally I find this all very fascinating and love the insight you guys are all providing. Nice to see the certificates, that's the first time I've seen them.  

Thanks Chris,

I wish I knew where the others were!

I also have some from manufacturers courses somewhere, JVC and Mitsubishi I think.

I did City and Guilds at Norwood Tech. I'm pretty sure it was course 222 and would have been early to late 70's. Probably still got the certificates somewhere.

I know I got a distinction for the first year and a merit for the second year. I think it was a four year course with colour mainly in the last year. The second year was very practical with lots of 'hands on' fault finding. I seem to remember having to build a small amplifier and then turning that into a signal injector. We had lots of GEC TV's, hand-wired types and I remember the tagstrips used to flash-over....that was quite un-nerving to the 'newbies'. I used to enjoy the fault-finding sessions but found it rather tedious 'going by the book'. As I was already in the trade and doing servicing at Philips I wanted to take the usual shortcuts but unfortunately you had to write down the fault finding procedures and skipping bits out lost marks.....

Colour was fascinating and we spent 8 weeks going through the chroma decoder. A great deal of time was spent going through each stage including colour difference, matrixing and RGB drive. During this period, Philips had just brought in a single chip decoder and were fitting it to the KT3 mkII chassis. I took one of the decoder boards in with me and a circuit. I got on well with the tutor and one evening as we were breaking for tea, I mentioned how interesting the chroma decoder had been 'but it's all obsolete now'. 'Why'? he asked. 'Because it's all in one chip....no fault finding, just change it'! He laughed and said 'Don't be daft'. Then I produced the single chip decoder and the circuit. He grabbed the board and looked critically at it and the circuit and muttered something like 'I don't believe this' and wandered off with it and the circuit to the staff room. On his return afterwards he put it in his desk drawer and commenced with the course. As we were leaving that evening he handed me the decoder and the circuit and said 'Don't say anything about this or we'll all be out of a job'!

You have to feel for the poor chap, he see's the future and at the same time the writing on wall. Thing is it was ultimately a fate you would all eventually share..... TV Trade? What TV trade?

My Colour TV principles 1969, I have removed my surname from the photo, I had been fixing CTV's since summer 1967, this was the first opportunity for me to sit the exam. Frank Edit. C&G must have had more money in the 60's hence the colour on the Cert.

Wow Frank armed and ready for action at the start of Colour, I'm most envious. I was just 6 at the time when you got that, by the time I left school ten years later it was the winter of discontent, the future was not half as bright as it was in 69.

I attended Gainsborough College of Further Education in '82 - '83. The course was C&G 224, I took parts I and II.

The first year, I attended with my best friend, the group was large enough to be split into two. I was in one, Chris in the other. When it came to the exams they were sat at the same time, with Chris in one classroom and again, me in another. We both got 99%, unheard of. We were separately dragged off for interviews and practically accused of cheating. It turned out that not only had we both got 99% but we'd both got the same question wrong and had both answered that question with the same 'wrong' answer. In our separate interviews we both said that the question we'd got wrong was written ambiguously and the way we'd interpreted the question meant that in our view the answer we'd given was correct and in our view we should have had 100%. Well! They ran around like headless chickens for a while, not knowing what to make of it. As we'd taken the exam at the same time in separate rooms and the invigilators hadn't seen any evidence of collusion of any sort the College eventually had to conclude we were as good as the results showed. As the first year was split into three sections and we both got something like 90% and 85% in the other parts too, we proved we were that good. Three distinctions for both of us. That year we lifted Gainsborough to first place in the results table.

In the second year, Chris had to drop out for personal reasons. I managed 'only' one distinction, and one credit in what was only a two part exam that year.

Although the sections I took only covered radio and black and white TV, I never really felt the need to take the later sections. I soon picked up colour TV (part III?) and teletext (part IIII?) in the field. As those sections were not available on a full time course (only being part time at Lincoln College where I ended up as a technician and lecturing in fault finding for five years) the employer I found wasn't willing to release me for a part time basis and as I had yet to pass my driving test I wasn't able to get there anyway.

I loved those two years. It was the first time (and last too!) that I'd found something that I enjoyed doing and it showed in the results.

I loved the TV trade too. I found the repairs incredibly satisfying, I often failed to enjoy the customers so much, but the repairs, I enjoyed immensely.

In late 1968, I enrolled at Matthew Bolton technical college in Birmingham.  I did a full time 48 course in Radio servicing.  Many of the students on that course were working for Visionhire at the time and their area engineer asked me if I would like to join the company which I did.  At  the end of the first year, I gained the City and Guilds Radio Servicing Intermediate.  Two years later on a part time basis I passed the City and Guilds 48 Final in TV servicing.  Another year on, I completed the colour TV endorsement.  The striking thing these courses had in common was the fact that they all had a practical content.  The good thing was, you had to put into practice what you learnt by way of fault finding on Radio and televisions both monchrome and colour.  All the subsequent technical education I received, ie BTEC ONC/HNC in telecoms did not do this although the technical content was greater.  The exception being the computing content of the BTEC courses where you were called upon to write and demonstrate simple computer programs in machine code.  

Whilst I worked for Visionhire, the company subjected me to their own 'trade test' where I attained  the dizzy heights of grade 3. whih took me to about £10 per week  My career at Radio Rentals was more of a success story since when they subjected me to their own trade test, I attained a Grade A status and my pay doubled to about £36 pound per week overnight from my £18 starting pay!  As with the City and Guilds, these company trade tests incorporated a practical content whereby you had to show your fault finding skill by repairing monochrome TVs in the first instance, a Thorn 1400 chassis then onto colour TV an 8500 chassis.  This they did in their own 'in house' training school in Sampson Road North in Birmingham, an old factory building now long since gone.

I'd city and guilds radio and tv servicing finals in 1969 at Oldham technical college got the big certificate in the post for was wondering if this is classified has a professional qualifications also did 4 years day release apprenticeship and the intermediate exam 

I far as I am aware it is not a professional qualification, more like a trade qualification. I have the same C&G if yours is course 48, I received that in 1968. 

It appears that you had the same experience that I did with day release and evening classes, I was never apprenticed though, I dodged that at the first company I worked at and I moved aged 17 to a much smaller firm which was an excellent move for me.

Yes the Intermediate exam from C&G and the Colour endorsement.

Most Technical Colleges in the 50’s,60’s and 70’s had some kind of Radio and TV courses running, Sideband wrote in an earlier post that he went in the early 80’s.

One thing that changed at Wigan Tech and C&G in the 70’s was the scrapping of course 48 and replacement with 224 but not day release it was full time for at least part of the course at Wigan. Someone may post more details, I was not involved so only remember the briefest information. 

Be nice to know when most colleges scrapped the radio and TV course, perhaps early 90’s but that’s a guess. Replaced by Personal Computer repair courses, there were no TV  courses at the end of the 90’s at one college in Lancashire only PC repair. 

brilliant course that 224.  I done parts 1 & 2 at canterbury college 1985>87

Ive got fond memories finding all those circuit board faults put on by the technicians, upon the radio sets and v1590 tv sets.

This was an awesome course ( best one for raw electronics circuit knowledge and practical training content). very enjoyable .  never had a course as good as this, 70% ish practical learning daily -  oh er 5 DAYS A WEEK AT COLLEGE - BOYS !!  (not 2.5 like nowadays).

Its a damn shame its all a retail led / throwaway world we now got. There's not many avenues to use component level knowledge like this now in jobs.

Posted by: TVJON74

My course ran for 3 years on day release and it was the City & Guilds 224 in elecroinc servicing. I don't know when this course stopped, but it must of been near the end of its run.

I think this is what we did, but it was a while ago now!

I dont remember having any books for the course, but there was usually photocopied worksheet/handouts for every class or we had to copy stuff down from the blackboard.

The worksheets would usually be information about the current subject, questions about what we had just been taught in the class and sometimes past exam questions also about what we had just been taught. These sheets were either typed or hand written. Sometimes there would be a hand drawn circuit or an excerpt from a manual.

The first year (90/91) was electronics principles and systems. This covered both analogue and digital electronics quite a lot of theory, but with some practical classes and these covered things like soldering, building circuits on vero board, making PCB' by hand and cable lacing etc. (there are probably many more but I cant remember). I think also after this year you had to choose if you wanted to go in to more digital systems or continue on the sevicing side.

Year two (91/92) was getting more in to the servicing side of things and covered radio and television principles and a bit more of electronics. I think we were now having a practical lesson most weeks and we were given real radio's to look at and set up or fault find on.

Year three (92/93) was more on televison (colour) and video recorders. This was the most interesting to me. We were working with Ferguson TX9's, Philips CF1's and Ferguson 3V16's. As I was already working for a small shop, I was seeing these sets quite a bit in the real world.

At exam time I think we were assessed on course work, a written/multiple choice eaxm paper and a practical exam. The practical exam was where various faults were put on to the above TV's and video recorder. I think we were given an amout of time on each set and had to write down/describe what the fault was, as it was presented to you and then you had to write down your process of fault finding (noting down voltages etc) and end up with the faulty component. I cant remember if we allowed to actually fix the fault to prove you got it right or not, as there was a class full of people moving round from set to set, so there probably wasn't time. You were marked on all parts of this process so even if you did not find the fault you still got marks for your workings. We were using AVO's, Hameg scope's and had a Philips PM5508 as a signal generator and the analogue TV service was still running.

I found some of my certificates. I must have some more somewhere, but they could be anywhere now!

what no REETB certs with C&G there  ????- show them with pride !! (1985>87  era We were given both)

I did hear that the course 224 was a good course but I never saw the syllabus, I did a couple of years teaching practical for course 48 in the early 70’s at night school but lost contact with the college after that.