Re: Are you missing Maplins?
Well I don't know about missing Maplin as a whole but I do miss being able to pop into my local store when I need the odd component. The staff were always very friendly and tried to be helpful but there was only one of them who had any idea about individual components. I was shocked a few years ago when I bought a ferrite rod aerial and a germanium diode but couldn't buy a variable capacitor of any kind and none of the staff actually knew what one was! I bought a load of stuff when they were closing down but I'll probably end up disposing of most of it on this forum. (Two baskets of anything for a fiver on the last day!) They were expensive for a lot of things but a lot of ordinary folk found them useful and if the successive owners hadn't loaded the company with the cost of buying it they would still be operating. As it was despite making a profit the company wasn't able to make a big enough profit to service the interest payments on the debt. A bit like when Manchester United was bought by the Americans but Maplin wasn't Manchester United!
David
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