A useful tool for testing those bargain boot sale phones before you buy!

When looking around car boot sales, radio rallies etc. you will often see telephones for sale. They can be second-hand, new or surplus stock and since they do not have a guarantee there is always a risk when buying them that they may be faulty.

Until now there has been no easy way to perform a basic test on a telephone where a working telephone line is not at hand. However, the Portable Telephone Tester described here will check the basic functions of a telephone without using a telephone line, and it is easily portable. It can, if you wish, even be used in the middle of a field (car boot sale) or anywhere where you are likely to find a telephone for sale.

The occasion that really prompted the design of this tester happened when visiting a radio rally. One of the stalls at the “meet” had about a dozen boxes on it, each containing quite an unusual type of telephone. They were priced at 5 UK pounds each and they appeared to be a real bargain - IF they were working! The stallholder said that they were all OK, but then they always do!

The purchase of two or three was contemplated, but the author could not justify taking a chance on what could turn out to be a box of scrap metal. Because of this only a single phone was bought. It turned out to be an excellent telephone, which has been in constant use to this day. It was this incident that made the author realize just how useful a portable telephone tester would be.