|
General Vintage Technology Discussions For general discussions about vintage radio and other vintage electronics etc. |
|
Thread Tools |
8th Dec 2019, 2:42 pm | #141 | |
Octode
Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: Wimbledon, London, UK.
Posts: 1,464
|
Re: Repair nightmares.
Quote:
Colin (a Brummie). |
|
11th Dec 2019, 2:28 pm | #142 | ||||
Pentode
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
Posts: 199
|
Re: Repair nightmares.
Quote:
Back when I worked at a TV Studio, Management decided to embrace "out sourcing" for the fairly large numbers of "domestic' type TVs which were used as floor monitors & other odd things, whilst keeping repair of specialist Picture Monitors "in house". It seemed like a good idea, as it was pretty stressful for a (mostly) "one man" department to keep up. Our first try was a large 27" Sony in a heavy wooden cabinet, with a low emission CRT. It was sent off to a service company for CRT replacement, & adjustment (convergence, etc). We provided a "good" CRT, & gave strict instructions to not break the vacuum of the old one, as we would have it "regunned". On its return, on looking into the tube carton, I found that the tube neck had been smashed just aft of the gun assembly. I then turned to the TV. Well, they had replaced the tube, but it looked like they had given up with convergence, & any other adjustments, for that matter. About 4 hours later, I had properly adjusted it & placed it back into service. Had I done everything from "scratch" myself, it might have taken 5! Undeterred, we sent a small Sanyo off to another service company. It wasn't starting up when the on button was pushed, so we opened it up, checked some "usual suspects", then decided to "outsource" it. We attached a note, detailing those checks we had already made, & off it went. They fixed it OK, but when it came back, we could see our note had been roughly torn off. On their attached job docket, under "customers complaint" they had written "doesn't work"! Quote:
Quote:
In the meantime, you try to get on with the problem. |
||||
11th Dec 2019, 5:02 pm | #143 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Wiltshire, UK.
Posts: 13,953
|
Re: Repair nightmares.
Wasn't Pebble Mill the BBC Midlands studios? If so I doubt they'd have been producing content for ATV!
|
11th Dec 2019, 5:21 pm | #144 | ||
Dekatron
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Wiltshire, UK.
Posts: 13,953
|
Re: Repair nightmares.
Quote:
To achieve peace I renewed the registration using my personal credit-card and 'normality' was restored - but in the process the domain-ownership also 'conveniently' got transferred into my name... Another time, a customer had a load of promotuional literature, TV/radio advertising, magazine/newspaper-inserts/flyers printed, website-design/back-end infrastructure and hosting provisioned and scheduled a major campaign to begin in a few days time. At which point I reminded them that they'd not actually registered the domain in their name. Cue much panic! Bow-tie-wearing advertising-types running around like headless chickens. Again, I registered the domain in my name, pointed it at my servers-on-three-continents-DNS, and saved their day (they shivered when they saw my invoice, but paid-up nonetheless). |
||
11th Dec 2019, 5:45 pm | #145 |
Heptode
Join Date: Sep 2014
Location: Coventry, West Midlands, UK.
Posts: 518
|
Re: Repair nightmares.
The Tingha and Tucka club was presented by Jean Morton. It came about because she was a local news presenter and on her return from a holiday in Australia she had brought back two toy Koala bears and someone as a joke showed one over her shoulder as she presented the news. It was so popular that she was then asked to do a kids show with the toy bears and they also added Katie kookubura and Willie wombat
|
11th Dec 2019, 6:59 pm | #146 |
Octode
Join Date: Jul 2011
Location: Stockport, Greater Manchester
Posts: 1,208
|
Re: Repair nightmares.
Best one that I can remember was some years back when I went to help a friend who had just bought a ramshackle house that needed completely rewiring amongst many other things. His mate a few doors down was a full time sparkie who had done the power circuits and put in the cables for the lighting ones, neatly labelling each one at the ends going to switches and fittings. The guy was having serious relationship issues with his then girlfriend and decided to decamp to Cuba for a few weeks to clear his head. My friend was due to move into the property imminently and needed lights so I went to finish the job off.
What I hadn't bargained for was that my friend had thought the wires sticking out where the switches and fittings would go, and previously neatly labelled by the other guy (another "Robert"), were a bit long and shortened them, at the same time losing all the labels. When I saw this, I excused myself and went outside, down to the bottom of the garden. There I said a few very bad words, quite loudly, and then returned to the job, test meter in hand. Later on, after much crawling round in very grubby lofts and under dusty floors (it was a very old house), it was finally done. I was so grubby I had to have a shower in their newly commissioned bathroom; at least the boiler was working. Tea was very definitely "on" my friend that night!
__________________
Robert |
12th Dec 2019, 12:07 am | #147 | |
Dekatron
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Greater Manchester, UK.
Posts: 18,676
|
Re: Repair nightmares.
Quote:
Uncle Cliff Richard appeared in at least one episode according to surviving footage on Youtube, I believe the show had a moral tone based on Christian ethics, so that might explain why he wanted to be involved.
__________________
-- Graham. G3ZVT |
|
12th Dec 2019, 12:46 am | #148 | |
Dekatron
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Greater Manchester, UK.
Posts: 18,676
|
Re: Repair nightmares.
Quote:
I had other duties as will, mainly in hotels, but all in all it was a lot of fun. I used to get requests from various production people to procure various items or set up presentations in committee rooms etc.
__________________
-- Graham. G3ZVT |
|
12th Dec 2019, 1:08 am | #149 |
Hexode
Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: Featherstone, West Yorkshire, UK.
Posts: 386
|
Re: Repair nightmares.
In the early days of musical synthesisers, they were in very short supply, made to order as often as not.
One day, a very expensive polyphonic beast appeared on my bench. Lid up and I think four layers of boards extended outward into their service positions, supported by bog rolls to keep them from touching. The salesman was on the phone every five minutes asking for a progress report for his customer. Even though I explained that whilst I was speaking to him on the phone, little was being done to find the fault. At one point, I had numeorous probes attached when the phone went again. As I reached over to pick up the phone, I caught a lead, and the whole lot tumbled; blinding flash, big bang and lots of smoke. What was that screamed the salesman. I explained that it was his synthesiser blowing up. His answer was that it will be on the way back to the customer that night. Nope, not that night not even that month. No such thing as replacement boards, and a new machine was months away. Very few semiconductors survived, but after a couple of months, it was returned working, having cost us about the same as a new unit in parts, and a lot more in labour. |
12th Dec 2019, 10:09 am | #150 | ||||
Pentode
Join Date: Sep 2019
Location: Perth, Western Australia, Australia.
Posts: 199
|
Re: Repair nightmares.
Quote:
No, the production people weren't near as scary & high level, but they were persistent. Remember the old aphorism about "Constant dripping wearing even a stone away"? The only thing at that sort of level that I was peripherally associated with, was with a previous employer, back in the 1960s, where the Senior Tech in charge of a TV transmitter installation job received a phone call from the Prime Minister of Australia, asking for an update on progress with the installation. It turns out the PM at the previous election had, unwisely, made a time commitment to provide ABC TV for Kalgoorlie, an important gold mining town in outback WA. The PM was nice enough, & didn't try any bullying tactics, but I was glad I was just one of the "minions"! Quote:
|
||||
13th Dec 2019, 11:23 pm | #151 |
Octode
Join Date: May 2003
Location: Belper Derbyshire
Posts: 1,910
|
Re: Repair nightmares.
One of my hobbies is collecting and repairing mechanical clocks. Some of the ones I buy are sold as non working.
One of my pet hates is when someone has tried to repair a clock without understanding how a clock functions. I wish people wouldn't oil clock mechanisms with oil. It would be so much easier to get working. One I had recently was a very nice 60's Smiths floating balance mantel clock and the oil was absolutely everywhere in it. More like being dunked in very old three in one oil. I have done several which have been lubricated and the volatile part of the oil evaporates leaving an almost varnish like substance stuck to all of the pivots, pinions and wheels and it takes me a long time with cocktail sticks pegging out all of the holes in the plates and getting rid of the well stuck on muck in the pinions. Its a long job... but I enjoy it as I have a working clock at the end of the day! Christopher Capener
__________________
Interests in the collection and restoration of Tefifon players and 405 line television |
14th Dec 2019, 9:54 am | #152 |
Nonode
Join Date: Jun 2008
Location: Coningsby, Lincolnshire, UK.
Posts: 2,814
|
Re: Repair nightmares.
Ah yes, the oiling of clocks! I have had several that have been ‘repaired and oiled by a professional clock restorer’ just to find it was actually someone with a screwdriver and a can of WD40 in a shed...
|
14th Dec 2019, 5:27 pm | #153 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Nov 2003
Location: Near Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK
Posts: 4,609
|
Re: Repair nightmares.
Many so-called repairers just stick the movement in an ultrasound bath. A bit like having a shower with all your clothes on!
As for WD40, it turns parts in most ammonited cleaning fluids such as Horolene, a bright bluish-green. Clock and watch oils are like no other as they are made not to 'creep' but to sty put from whey they are. If you can actually see oil in a clock it's been over-oiled or worse.
__________________
Mike. |
14th Dec 2019, 6:50 pm | #154 |
Rest in Peace
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Hexham, Northumberland, UK.
Posts: 2,234
|
Re: Repair nightmares.
A strange fault occurred in my last job. I was part of a team looking after emergency services vehicles and although the main part of the job involved radio comms, every now and again we would be asked by our fleet workshops to troubleshoot an installation that hadn't quite gone to plan. This one involved a roof mounted light bar which basically followed the American style where all the blue lights and sirens are mounted on one unit attached to the car a bit like a normal roof rack. In this case the auto electrical techs had fitted a bar to a brand new car and released it for road use. The car soon returned saying the lights etc had a mind of their own, choosing randomly when to switch on and off. This caused alarm and surprise to the driver (and members of the public) because the blue lights would suddenly start flashing of their own accord and could not be switched off. Turned out that the logic inputs to the controller had been designed to use a switch panel using an internal filament lamp when enabled. This acted nicely as a logic pull down when not switched on. The switches used had leds in with series resistors and allowed the logic levels to float high and confuse the controller. Took us a while to find what was causing that one. We also occasionally had cases of the lights and sirens acting strangely when the radio transmitted due to high levels of RF around the vehicle.
|
14th Dec 2019, 7:09 pm | #155 | |
Dekatron
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Wiltshire, UK.
Posts: 13,953
|
Re: Repair nightmares.
Quote:
Equally, the neighbours' PIR security-lights would come on and their burglar-alarm would trigger when poked with 50 Watts of AM on 86.mumble MHz of PMR signal. |
|
15th Dec 2019, 4:07 pm | #156 |
Heptode
Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: Heysham, Lancashire, UK.
Posts: 665
|
Re: Repair nightmares.
Ah that reminds me of an old B&O tuner-amp which switched on the diodes in the stereo decoder either with the FM stereo pilot tone, or with a bias current through the (extinguished) stereo bulb. AM and FM signals went through the stereo decoder.
So the first time one of these came in with severe distortion on AM, and everything else undistorted, it took a while to diagnose. Stuart |
15th Dec 2019, 6:53 pm | #157 | |
Dekatron
Join Date: Sep 2011
Location: Rugeley, Staffordshire, UK.
Posts: 8,809
|
Re: Repair nightmares.
Quote:
__________________
A digital radio is the latest thing, but a vintage wireless is forever.. |
|
15th Dec 2019, 7:14 pm | #158 |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: Cornwall, UK.
Posts: 849
|
Re: Repair nightmares.
Bit off topic but here's what I use on my cuckoo clocks-
https://timesavers.com/i-9995343-j-d...-oil-50ml.html |
15th Dec 2019, 7:22 pm | #159 | |
Moderator
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Ipswich, Suffolk, IP4, UK.
Posts: 21,192
|
Re: Repair nightmares.
Quote:
The important property it possesses is that it stays within plain bearings and doesn't creep out attracting dirt and dust.
__________________
Graham. Forum Moderator Reach for your meter before you reach for your soldering iron. |
|
15th Dec 2019, 8:02 pm | #160 | |
Rest in Peace
Join Date: Mar 2011
Location: Basildon, Essex, UK.
Posts: 4,100
|
Re: Repair nightmare's.
Quote:
Mike |
|