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Old 2nd Feb 2018, 1:08 pm   #21
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I built a small transmitter on 4.433 Mz (ask a t v tech why!) worked over a small area only had a short telescopic antenna.
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Old 2nd Feb 2018, 3:09 pm   #22
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I built a small transmitter on 4.433 Mz .
Did you gauge your transmitter coverage on the distance the neighbours came from to complain about patterning on their telly's colour?
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Old 2nd Feb 2018, 4:42 pm   #23
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I remember setting up a small loudspeaker connected to a mic and low power amp in a small bush next door, where a dear old lady lived who loved gardening. She talked to me for quite a while thinking I was hiding in the bush, until eventually her curiosity got the better of her and she started looking for me. She was very surprised to find there was no-one there. I must have been about 9 at the time. On the strange noises at night thing, when I was about ten years old, I clearly remembering hearing like a very fast morse noise at night, which were very like some sounds regularly used on "Star Trek" on TV at the time. I never explained what caused them. I also remember experimenting with transmitters, but of course didn't have any way of measuring frequency, so I was probably spreading some horrendous harmonics around for miles. I also built an EHT generator from an old TV LOPT and connected it to large sheets of aluminium foil to watch the little corona spikes in the dark. Trying to convert an old TV into a scope etc etc. Learned loads at the time.
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Old 2nd Feb 2018, 5:04 pm   #24
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Thankyou to Rambo and Biggles for this- i knew i wouldn't be alone.

The impression i got was that the morse was an actual signal received (or possibly generated) within the inner/middle ear (or even in the brain) rather than audio coming through the outer ear and then being processed. Had someone had their ear next to mine they would not, i am certain, have heard a dicky bird.
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Old 2nd Feb 2018, 5:11 pm   #25
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Aged about eleven, I started taking apart old radios and tv to keep the parts. More like butchered them in hindsight, using pliers to cut out the nice striped parts, resistors. I had a hornby dublo 3 rail train layout on a board. To be more realistic I wanted my own high voltage pylons with enamelled wire unwound from transformers. My dad had given me a Taylor multimeter in a leather case and taught me the basic ac transformer theory of "high voltage, low current and low voltage high current" as a simple explanation.
My "power station" was a loudspeaker or frame output transformer wired as step up and connected to the 15v ac o/p from my hornby dublo power supply control unit. This was great fun, providing quite a high voltage as you can imagine. A few shocks later whilst setting up my " grid", I then discovered how to get nice vivid arcs across the hv wires. This was soon stopped by my dad confiscating the transformer as I was obliterating the picture on the 405 tv in the next room.

When we moved house a short while later, my uncle gave me several old tv sets with round crt fitted. Possibly about 12"? He warned me of the dangers of how they would implode with spectacular results.
This I had to see for myself. So, setting up a couple of tubes at the bottom of the garden with the screen facing us, my older brother and I retired to a safe distance and proceeded to lob half bricks at them. Yes, a loud "boom" & bits of glass everywhere, including much of our dad's proposed veg patch! I can't remember getting a good hiding or not, but my uncle was told not to bring us any more tv sets. Radios fine, but no tv!
I can imagine to this day the owners of that house often wondering where all the small, thick pieces of glass had come from.
This was the same garden where my brother made a steel bike pump into a cannon to fire ball bearings, using gunpowder from several bangers. Penetrated 7 of our house moving tea chests that were lined up. But that is getting OT. Just to illustrate the dangerous things us kids did for fun in the early 60s, as well as the fascination of electricity!
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Last edited by CambridgeWorks; 2nd Feb 2018 at 5:14 pm. Reason: grammar
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Old 2nd Feb 2018, 5:52 pm   #26
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"The Philpott",
My latest "acoustic incident" happened only a few years ago.
I noticed a strange undulating sensation in my head, it only happened in bed whilst lying in a particular way, it was very odd.
I discovered that if I switched the power off at the consumer unit the effect disappeared.

I eventually tracked it down to the small aquarium in the hall, the air pump was a vibratory type and made a distinctive 50Hz noise but what I heard in bed seemed to be this noise modulated by the slow wave motion of the water across the tank.
Infrasound I suppose.
My bed and the tank were not only on different floors, but on diagonally opposite corners of the house.

Rob,
When I was in the 1st year of secondary school we found a big box of valves in a greenhouse, we used them as handgrenades in our army games, They must have been 1930s era valves from what I remember of them, some had double top-caps.
I wonder how much they would be worth today?
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Old 2nd Feb 2018, 8:41 pm   #27
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Bit OT again but leads to relevant item. Age about 10, a friend 200 yards along the street lived in a large farmhouse, with about 2 acres of open farmyard and sheds devoted mainly to their agricultural crop spraying business. Empty aluminium cans, about 1 pint with screw top made ideal "hand grenades" when filled with water and no top fitted. These cans originally contained a pesticide, metasystox. I could recognise the smell to this day!
I digress. Scattered throughout the yard were various obsolete machinery and vehicles. A small, possibly 1000 gallon tanker, used for sulhuric acid. This was ex-army and had the hinged circular hatch lid in the cab roof. The most interesting one was a former box body type lorry, possibly a 3 tonner? A lid in the cab of this one as welll. This was a former radio comms vehicle of ww2 era. No radios left, but various aerial and plug/sockets all over it. We used to climb all over it and pretend to be commanding our soldiers using small tins as pretend microphones. Gas masks were another essential item to wear during our "war"!
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Old 2nd Feb 2018, 9:31 pm   #28
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My bed and the tank were not only on different floors, but on diagonally opposite corners of the house.
Do you practise feng shui by any chance?
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Old 2nd Feb 2018, 9:47 pm   #29
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There was a green painted corrugated iron shed which probably stands no more.
Good job my secrets died with it - it couldn't talk.
Experimental paraffin wick lamps revealing the secrets of the pressure burners / Primus they could become when engineered right.
Spark transmissions as previously described.
Static rocket test bed - In the bench vice - pre Nov5th.
Evacuate - my God - it's full of stars. Thanks to Arthur C for that.
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Old 2nd Feb 2018, 11:01 pm   #30
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1 pint with screw top made ideal "hand grenades" when filled with water and no top fitted. These cans originally contained a pesticide, metasystox. I could recognise the smell to this day!
Then there was the radio chassis I found on the waste land at the back of the Newsagents. I would later discover it was an R1155.

I lugged it home to my shed and over the next few days / weeks began to defuse this "nuclear device". I remember the long rolls of paper and silver foil dripping with oil...
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Old 3rd Feb 2018, 12:15 am   #31
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As far as hearing sounds at night I have started hearing the hum more so since having to start taking tablets that make my senses a bit brighter apart from doing what they are supposed to do.
The reports by others show a striking match to what I can hear.
http://www.thehum.info/
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Old 3rd Feb 2018, 6:06 pm   #32
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Definitely off topic so I promise this is the last one on noises. Mods feel free to delete as appropriate. The last time I heard "The Hum" was a lot of years ago on the Solway Coast marshes beside Burgh-by-Sands. I don't know if it was some effect of the tidal flow but there was a discernible very low frequency humming noise. As local people will know, this isn't very far from the Anthorn VLF high power transmitter site. Also it is said that people who experience weird sensations in supposedly haunted premises could be hearing VLF sounds coming from plant such as large fans etc.
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Old 3rd Feb 2018, 10:58 pm   #33
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I remember when I was a young lad in the early 70's, there was only 2 tv channels as I remember, and on Saturdays my mother and father would leave me with my grandma while they went shopping. I was playing with an old meccano motor and when I started it up the tv picture collapsed into a load of lines,now the problem with Saturday was it was western day and gran was mad on them, no other show got a look in.

I turned on the motor and the picture went off, end of western, gran leapt up and changed channel (kids program) I quickly turned the motor off, tv worked, she turned back to the western, motor on, no picture, in the end she gave up and I watched the kids shows, this "mysterious fault",manifested itself every Saturday for the following month, even a couple of visits from a tv engineer failed to find the cause of the problem! Eventually I showed my father how it was done, and far from being annoyed he was delighted, it seemed that as my gran lived with us she considered that being the eldest she had the right to decide what was being watched, I believe he kept the motor hidden behind his chair, and long after I had gone to bed, the mysterious fault would reappear at certain times, usually when gran's planned viewing clashed with something my father wanted to watch.
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Old 3rd Feb 2018, 11:33 pm   #34
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A slight correction - in the '70s there were Three Channels, BBC1,BBC2, and ITV. Back OT. I don't recall carrying out any wierd experiments, other than perhaps reversing the connections to the scan coils of a Bush TV53, which of course resulted in a reversed picture if the line coil connections were reversed, and an upside down picture if the field coils were connected the wrong way round. The TV53, which was scrapped many years ago, could of course only receive BBC1 & ITV (Channels 4 and 8 in this area) as it was a 405 line VHF only set dating from the mid 1950s.
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Old 3rd Feb 2018, 11:36 pm   #35
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Originally Posted by Jon_G4MDC View Post
There was a green painted corrugated iron shed which probably stands no more.
Good job my secrets died with it - it couldn't talk.
Experimental paraffin wick lamps revealing the secrets of the pressure burners / Primus they could become when engineered right.
Spark transmissions as previously described.
Static rocket test bed - In the bench vice - pre Nov5th.
Evacuate - my God - it's full of stars. Thanks to Arthur C for that.
When we were about 12 years old, myself and one of the lads up the street were playing about with a chemistry set he'd been bought by his parents. we'd done all the usual out of the book experiments, decided they were boring and decided to try our own,mix a bit of this with a bit of that, nothing happened, even heating the stuff made no effect.
We were sat in his room on this particular night, his parents were out and his elder sister was in the lounge, we mixed several chemicals in a conical flask and much to our delight it turned bright purple and began to smoke. he took it into the front room to show his sister, she was in the 6th form and studying chemistry. When we told her what was in it, she snatched it from him, ran outside and hurled it down the garden, it hit the back fence, there was a loud bang, and a big chunk of concrete blew out of the panel, wow! we'd made something that did something.
His sister asked what we'd mixed (the only thing I can remember now was potassium permanganate) she took the chemistry set and it was never seen again. Next week at school we gave our chemistry teacher a list of the things we'd mixed and asked what would happen if you mixed them. He gave us a rather alarmed look, tore up the paper and told us never to mention it again!
It was some years later when we were both much older that we discovered it was some kind of high explosive, and was often used by terrorists, we were lucky we didn't blow the house up, imagine being able to buy a kids chemistry set today that did that. incidentally I also had a little book that I had obtained during a clearout of old books at a library, it was called something like, "the schoolboys book of bangs", and believe it or not it contained instructions on how to make explosives using everyday items you'd find in the home, sodium chlorate weedkiller and sugar being one it recommended to be tried!.
I remember one of our group and his parents were quite well off, they owned a business, and bought a house down a private lane. It was a nice house,but, there were a number of large trees along the road that his father had decided needed to go. Being a helpful group,of also bored teenagers we decided to help with this, and Ratty, who's dad owned the local quarry, said he could get us some dynamite, he was always bringing lengths of fuse to school and we'd extract the gunpowder, wrap it in tinfoil and make "genies".
He arrived at the house one day during the summer holidays with a bag containing quite a few sticks of dynamite, he suggested we should start with 3! he'd brought about a dozen, so as he said, "if 3 doesn't shift it, we've plenty left". We dug a hole under the roots, rammed in 3 sticks, attached a long fuse, lit it and legged it to the far end of the drive, about a minute later there was a massive explosion, and it began to rain soil, the smoke eventually cleared and we ran back up the drive. The tree had gone along with several tons of earth, it looked like a remake of the battle of the somme! We all turned and looked at Ratty, " bit ****** much wasn't it?" my mate yelled at him,wondering how he was going to explain the loss of the tree, and the creation of a hole that would make a very large pond! "wasn't my fault" replied Ratty, "my dad has never let me use explosives in the quarry".
It turned out the explosives were kept in a secure store, the key "hidden" on site and Ratty knew where it was, it was a simple matter of him going up there when it was closed, and "borrowing" a few of the sticks of explosive.
We never found a trace of the tree, and we avoided going to our mates house for weeks after. Sometimes when I watch space programs I can imagine them showing a picture of a massive tree floating through space and wondering how it got there.
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Old 3rd Feb 2018, 11:43 pm   #36
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A slight correction - in the '70s there were Three Channels, BBC1,BBC2, and ITV. Back OT. I don't recall carrying out any wierd experiments, other than perhaps reversing the connections to the scan coils of a Bush TV53, which of course resulted in a reversed picture if the line coil connections were reversed, and an upside down picture if the field coils were connected the wrong way round. The TV53, which was scrapped many years ago, could of course only receive BBC1 & ITV (Channels 4 and 8 in this area) as it was a 405 line VHF only set dating from the mid 1950s.
You are probably correct, I was only 5 in 1970,I can remember our telly being black and white, and I think certain channels didn't transmit all the time, although I may be wrong,maybe there was some other reason, I remember quite often on BBC there was only the "test card". Happy days they were, we may not have had many channels,but neither did we have all the garbage that passes for tv viewing these days.
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Old 4th Feb 2018, 12:02 am   #37
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I can remember when I first read that capacitors could explode if they were overloaded.
I found an old electrolytic and connected it to a long bit of 2-core wire and plugged it into a big 50 volt transformer and ran it a few yards into the garden.
It sent a steaming missile over the large garden next door and disappeared in a cloud of smoke.
I found the can again and it was all clean and shiny inside. I could have made a cannon.
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Old 4th Feb 2018, 12:11 am   #38
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I was always fascinated by fluorescent tubes when I was a kid and had a small Atlas 8W fitting under the shelf over the desk where I did my homework. I discovered you could use a frame output transformer from a Thorn 1400 or similar as a ballast, although it did get a bit hot! I had another 8W tube, 'rescued' (!) from a smashed traffic bollard, mounted under the shelf and wired to said transformer & starter sat on top of the shelf. Bare live terminals of course .
This worked fine for some time although that smell of hot windings did fill the room after an hour or so. I came back into the room one day to find that the paperwork near the transformer had caught fire and the end of the shelf was in flames! I did manage to put it out but the shelf was scarred for life!
When I look back on the stuff I used to have in my room, I'm amazed that my parents gave me so much freedom. Parents would have kittens these days if their 14 year olds were playing with live mains and Kilovolts of transformer derived volts!!
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Old 4th Feb 2018, 12:11 am   #39
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The safety master isolation switch at the front of most school science labs was ideal for remotely detonating anything which was likely to go bang. The master switch was switched off at the front then the "item under test" was connected up to a socket at the back and switched on. All retire to the front safely behind the thick wooden benches while some brave pupil was nominated to switch on the master switch and wait for the fireworks/smoke/bang at the back. All done while the teacher popped out for a fag. I remember one of my mates used to short out a sealed lead acid cell with plastic covered wire to create "smells" which often led to the lesson being disrupted while the teacher evacuated the class and searched for the burning material. Not that we were bad kids you understand...
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Old 4th Feb 2018, 12:20 am   #40
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It worked the other way round for me. I never played with transmitters. I was interested in better and better receivers and oscilloscopes.

One neighbour, across the street used to swear blind it had to be me making interference on his TV or radio. No-one else had any problems but "He messes about wirth radio stuff"

Anyway one day he blew his top and stormed across to have a word with my father. "He's not here." cut no mustard with him "He must have left something on" seemed to counter that one. Dad had the trump card "He hasn't been here for months. He's away working for Rolls-Royce now."

I used to fix loads of tellies for the old folks around the village, christmas tree lights and all that sort of stuff, but never his.

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