Our First Microwave Oven

[duncanlowe]

Something of nothing on this thread: Do we have any Welsh members? Allegedly the official Welsh for a microwave is Poppity Ping. I hope that's true but can see it might be an urban myth.

Back to the faults. I've also come across the temperature sensor to switch off the oven if the magnetron gets too hot. We have a Whirlpool oven (though Ikea branded) that started giving fault codes for overheat quite soon after we bought it. Faulty sensor? Don't know, but for sure that sensor wasn't there. Taken away and fixed under warranty. Only problem we have with it now is the odd stuck button.

[G.Castle]

A Welsh speaking friend has just told me that it's a Meicrodon. Popty does however mean oven.

I really don't know if that's so, but she can both pronounce and spell Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysilio gogogoch

(I cut and pasted it from the town official website).

[G6Tanuki]

Meicro was the word I remember from my Aberystwyth days. Welsh and English have always adapted and embraced words across the language boundaries, with suitable spelling adjustment, I remember a garage in Borth advertising that it offered services including Teiars, Batris, Siocs and Egsorsts...

[Graham G3ZVT]

The Welsh for SLOW seem onomatopoeic when painted on a road. Evokes the sound of screeching wheels. ARAF.

[Gulliver]

Originally Posted by paulsherwin

There was a price crash at the end of the 80s as the Korean manufacturers got involved. The typical price for a basic microwave went from over £200+ to under 3 figures in just a couple of years.

Yep....my grandmother bought my mother our family's first microwave in 1988. Probably for her birthday so would have been around April. It was a Samsung, a name not well known then but they'd hit the headlines in a minor way by producing decent goods like microwaves for half the price of the Japanese competition. I'm sure this one was less than £100

With little to compare it to other than a Sharp Carousel that we had in the school cooking room, I'd say it did the job. It was a "digital" model with touch pad and VFD display. But it only lasted a couple of years because my mother went out to play bingo, leaving in a potato for me at what she thought was 9 minutes....she'd actually set the timer for 99 minutes. When I found it, the insides were on fire, the potato had turned to carbon and the plastic "oven" cavity had melted and caved in upon itself.

Never dared tell my gran. I think she rumbled us over a year later when she was visiting and wanted to defrost something....

The replacement circa 1992 was a Sharp "jet/convection/gril" microwave which was ****** excellent and lasted something like twenty years. I also had one which lasted a good 15 years.

But I can still remember the sequence to get the Samsung to cook...."time cook, one, zero, zero, power level, start" would cook on full power for 10 minutes. It had no turntable, and instead had a fan above that was supposed to ensure even cooking. It didn't really, because if you tried to cook something like a chicken you'd find hot spots and cold spots. It did things like soups, potatoes, reheating fridged dishes, defrosting well enough though. Came with a little book on microwave cooking techniques, which alleged how one could cook crispy bacon in it. I do recall it was quite adept at cooking fish if one was careful with the timing.

[Gulliver]

Originally Posted by duncanlowe

Something of nothing on this thread: Do we have any Welsh members? Allegedly the official Welsh for a microwave is Poppity Ping. I hope that's true but can see it might be an urban myth.

I have Welsh friends who *do* call it ao "poppity ping" but always with a knowing smile. I think it's a bit of an urban myth that ultimately made it into reality.

Also Nigella Lawson has popularised "meecro-wavvee"

[Graham G3ZVT]

A few people insist on calling them Nukes.

My late mother had a microwave (I suppose it's mine, once I've cleared the house), can't think of the make, but it's got a very unintuitive way to set the time of day, something like:-

CLOCK START HHMM CLOCK

I've struggled with that several times, and I'm the sort of person that to "RTFM" is tantamount to admitting defeat

[DrStrangelove]

I've been known to refer to the popity ping.

I'm not Welsh speaking but have an O level in the language of heaven.

Then again in BTVS mode I've been known to refer to nuking stuff.

My parents first microwave was probably a Tesco special.

As I recall I discovered they hadn't removed the wraparound film when I nuked an old potato in a vain attempt to bake it & set it on fire instead but the smoke couldn't escape other that around the door seals.

[Roger Ramjet]

A few members mentioned fires. Reminds me of the early 90's when a company I worked adopted a senior accountant from another subsiduary . He was not a very nice person & very judgemental of others. Then one day he put a meal in the staff microwave which ultimately went up in flames. Of course it was not his fault, the microwave was scrapped & we were not allowed a replacement because he declared they were unsafe !

[G6Tanuki]

My late mother, naiive to the ways of the microwave, once tried cooking frozen puff pastry sausage rolls in the microwave.

Differential absorption of 2.45GHz energy meant that by the time the pastry outer had fluffed up nicely, the meat in the middle had taken on the gastronomic character of wood.

She also learned the hard way about how quickly butter turned to oily liquid when she tried the microwave for softening a block of it taken from the fridge.

[duncanlowe]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

She also learned the hard way about how quickly butter turned to oily liquid when she tried the microwave for softening a block of it taken from the fridge.

Now here's a thing that I learned right here on this very forum. Now I knew full well how quickly butter goes south. So gave VERY short bursts. Only on this forum did I learn that for the first three seconds (ish) there is no uWave output. So three second bursts to soften the butter, don't.

[Graham G3ZVT]

Originally Posted by duncanlowe

Now here's a thing that I learned right here on this very forum. Now I knew full well how quickly butter goes south. So gave VERY short bursts. Only on this forum did I learn that for the first three seconds (ish) there is no uWave output. So three second bursts to soften the butter, don't.

It's a reminder that we haven't quite left the valve era behind.

There's another thermionic device in some modern domestic appliances.
What might I be referring to... ?

[G6Tanuki]

Originally Posted by Graham G3ZVT

There's another thermionic device in some modern domestic appliances.
What might I be referring to... ?

Apart from the Magnetron, Vacuum-fluorescent displays?

[Graham G3ZVT]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

Apart from the Magnetron, Vacuum-fluorescent displays?

That's the one!!

They will amplify (and oscillate).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gqzf_IJfkRY

and as for the humble oven magnetron how about this?
https://www.n5dux.com/ham/files/pdf/...ave%20Oven.pdf

[Nickthedentist]

Anyone remember forum member Adibrook and his very creative but somewhat dangerous experiments? I’m sure he got one to work as a triode amplifier.

Edit… I didn’t imagine it: https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...ead.php?t=9436

[locknut]

Originally Posted by Roger Ramjet

the microwave was scrapped & we were not allowed a replacement because he declared they were unsafe !

About the same time, we clubbed together to buy one for the workshop which we hid in a steel tool cupboard, management were not happy when someone bubbled us and our illicit oven. After some negotiation, we were allowed to keep it if we let them test it for leakage on a regular basis - they had a contract with a company to test others on site.

I put that down as a win.

[Outrun_uk]

Originally Posted by Richard_FM

My family had a Toshiba oven from the Norweb shop in Stockport in 1986, which lasted until 2007 when my parents did up the kitchen & had a newer microwave built.

It was stored for a year & I had hoped to take it with me when I moved out, but it didn't want to work when it brought out of storage & tested!

I think that's the same model as our first one! nWas bought secondhand and Never missed a beat, IIRC was passed on to someone else when the kitchen got refitted.

A far cry from the ones available now

Kev

[Richard_FM]

Originally Posted by Outrun_uk

I think that's the same model as our first one! nWas bought secondhand and Never missed a beat, IIRC was passed on to someone else when the kitchen got refitted.

A far cry from the ones available now

Kev

The Panasonic one I bought when I moved into my flat have never missed a beat either in nearly 15 years.

[John_BS]

Another vote for the OP's Tosh.
Ours never failed in 30 years: passed on to the village hall who decided it was too large and chucked it out.... :>(

[Richard_FM]

Originally Posted by John_BS

Another vote for the OP's Tosh.
Ours never failed in 30 years: passed on to the village hall who decided it was too large and chucked it out.... :>(

The same model my family had for years.