Feeling like an idiot!

[Dave757]

Originally Posted by Graham G3ZVT

Who hasn't soldered all the wires to a connector, only to realise you've forgotten to thread the cable through the shell first?

Hi,

Many years ago I worked for a firm that had an internal telephone system
provided I think by Reliance. It used old black push button phones
which had a button for every extension, and a large circular black
terminal block on the wall with the entry in the centre of the Bakelite cover.

From memory, it used a 28 core cable to connect each phone to the system.
My phone went faulty, and the engineer brought a replacement instrument.
Yes, he had reconnected all the cores to the terminal block before he realised
he had not threaded the cover on first. And yes, I can remember his words
to this day, but sadly they are not repeatable here!

Kind regards
Dave
G0ELJ

[slidertogrid]

Not electrical but, one of my most embarrassing mistakes was donkey's years ago when my friends and I had just started going to ham rallies and junk sales. I heard that there was a rally on in a local hall so on the day off we went, four of us, paid on the door and walked into the hall. First thing I saw was a huge marrow...??
I looked around the hall and saw more impressive fruit and vegetables. Yep! I had got the day wrong! I wasn't allowed to forget that mistake for a while...

[Refugee]

Someone typed Wales into a sat-nav and ended up in Wales in South Yorkshire.
It was in the newspaper and they had another half a day to get to where they really wanted to be.
https://www.google.com/maps/@53.3401...8192?entry=ttu

[Graham G3ZVT]

Originally Posted by slidertogrid

Not electrical but, one of my most embarrassing mistakes was donkey's years ago when my friends and I had just started going to ham rallies and junk sales. I heard that there was a rally on in a local hall so on the day off we went, four of us, paid on the door and walked into the hall. First thing I saw was a huge marrow...??
I looked around the hall and saw more impressive fruit and vegetables. Yep! I had got the day wrong! I wasn't allowed to forget that mistake for a while...

I went to the same place. No transistors, but plenty of geraniums

[Gabe001]

Originally Posted by radiomobile

Some years ago a friend built a rather nice amplifier, immaculate workmanship as usual, but when he came to install the EL34's he was unable to fit them in to the valveholders. You've guessed it, he had used Mazda octal valveholders by mistake!

Happened to me recently. I didn't even know there were different octal sockets!

[Ted Kendall]

Originally Posted by Graham G3ZVT

Who hasn't soldered all the wires to a connector, only to realise you've forgotten to thread the cable through the shell first?

Many times - many many times

[60 oldjohn]

Originally Posted by slidertogrid

Not electrical but, one of my most embarrassing mistakes was donkey's years ago when my friends and I had just started going to ham rallies and junk sales. I heard that there was a rally on in a local hall so on the day off we went, four of us, paid on the door and walked into the hall. First thing I saw was a huge marrow...??
I looked around the hall and saw more impressive fruit and vegetables. Yep! I had got the day wrong! I wasn't allowed to forget that mistake for a while...

I went to to Scarborough Radio Rally on the Sunday, 100+ miles 3 hour round trip. This was on a Bank Holliday, I had it all to do again the next day as it was on the BH Monday. This time I double checked Carlton RR was to be held in a School I had been there a year before. I arrived at Carlton, could not find the School no RR signs asked and no one knew anything. Went home to find there are many Carltons I should have been at the one 10 miles away.

John.

[Valvepower]

Been there many times and got the tee-shirt, keyring and mug.

It’s quite easy during the ‘white heat’ of doing something on the bench to loose track of where you’re at and finding captain calamity and cock-up has paid you visit – so to speak.

Being honest, I get quite anxious doing posts on this forum and putting my technical and engineering foot it, and making a mistake, thus making a total fool of myself

I often think - what-if I’ve made a mistake - in a Bulletin article; especially after I've done the proof read giving the OK for the article to go to print!

Terry

[G6Tanuki]

There were two versions of quite a lot of the jelly-beans transistors, one with the leadouts E-B-C and the other B-C-E.

Someone I know put some newly designed gear out to a small company with instructions on how to build them and paid extra for the three day turnround.

An order for 500.


You can guess what happened. The company in question had to re-run the job at their expense and also pay back the three day fast turnround supplement.

[Joe_Lorenz]

Many many years ago I ordered a huge air compressor for underground mining use, clearly defining specs for the electrical motor. To be fed by a 500 V 50 Hz 3ph IT-type grid. The well known German manufacturer was quite eager to double check every detail given and at last I was sure everything was understood well.
Upon delivery we saw a big red decal on the well made brand new machinery "Beware! Mining voltage!" Our chief electrical engineer then got big round eyeballs when he found out they had sent us a motor for 208 V 3 ph 60 Hz! So it immediately qualified for a go-around, not so cheap for the manufacturer!

[high_vacuum_house]

I remember when I was working at Perkins in the R&D test labs, I was asked to make 2 off 50 way connectors on a big multi core cable. One end on each was to be left bare as to pass through the test cell wall and into the control room.

I had measured out the 2 lengths of cable and coiled them up on the electronics desk before taking time to nicely make up the 50 way connectors and housings.

Imagine my embarrassment when going to fit them with the test engineer that I had connected both ends to sockets on one cable and had the other cable left bare!!

[mark_in_manc]

I have been enjoying these posts - I can imagine that Christopher, it makes forgetting to thread the top on a duraplug (again) pale into insignificance

Yesterday I made myself feel like an idiot by taking a socket off the wall in our hallway, noting the wires were loose in the connectors at the back (as half-expected), tightening them up, and putting it back. It took 10 minutes, means that our internet does not drop out when I plug something else into the 'double plug' adaptor I lazily leave in it, and (on the theme of laziness) had been like that since before Nov 1994 when I moved in here.

Oh well.

[Oldmadham]

With my first mains operated receiver (a 3 valve regen built from a magazine), I inadvertently plugged a 1D8GT in the 6X5GT rectifier socket, causing a lot of pretty fireworks inside the envelope.

I have no idea what the 1D8 was doing in my box of valves for that radio.

[paul larner]

once repaird the y amp on a scope then turned it the right way up only realising the main pcb was resting ontop of a small coil of solder,shorting out most of the pcb,only realised after applying power,that tottaly killed it,broke it for parts,what an idiot i felt!.