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General Vintage Technology Discussions For general discussions about vintage radio and other vintage electronics etc. |
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19th Mar 2015, 5:33 pm | #101 |
Heptode
Join Date: Sep 2014
Location: Coventry, West Midlands, UK.
Posts: 519
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Re: Your daftest mistakes??
not my mistake but I was there.
It was the late 60's and 2 mates and I were very keen on tv and radio work. We were in a brand new classroom all nicely painted and pristine and working on our own when one of my mates asked "which are the mains input and which are the 6.3v output on this transformer"? My other mate and I replied that the mains input were the thin wires and the 6.3v output would be the thicker wires. Needless to say we weren't believed and he wired it the other way around.(Why ask if you aren't going to take any notice?) Well he plugged it in and switched on,whoosh bang!!!!!!! The whoosh was the wax from the transformer shooting up and all over the ceiling. The bang was the fuse going. The classroom suddenly didn't look quite so pristine Steve |
12th Apr 2015, 9:35 am | #102 |
Octode
Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Cullompton, Devon, UK.
Posts: 1,435
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Re: Your daftest mistakes??
Back in the late 50s, a group of my teenage mates belonged to a Church group called the Covenanters, a follow on from Sunday School, there were girl Covenanters as well, probably the reason we attended church. We had a thursday club in the large church hall, where we made our own entertainment, I remember the lads clubbing together to buy a amplifier, which was purchased from one of the surplus dealers in Practical Wireless, complete with a pair of 6L6G valves which cost a grand total of £3 19/6p, I think the speaker was 12" and cost 25/6p, we had been using it for nearly a year with recordings of top of the pops, when one day the loudspeaker bolted to a huge piece of chip board fell over and touched the cast iron radiator large bang lots of smoke loss of entertainment ( what ever could we do with ourselves now?) no one had realised the chassis was live, no one ever had a shock off of the amplifier, no RCDs back then just a trusty piece of 15amp fuse wire. Just think nowadays there would have to be a site meeting a work assessment health and safety issues and insurance let alone a performing acts contract and licence, so no wonder you have youths hanging out on street corners not having any thing to do.
John |
12th Apr 2015, 10:21 am | #103 | |
Dekatron
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Bewdley, Worcestershire, UK.
Posts: 4,748
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Re: Your daftest mistakes??
Quote:
Many of us have similar tales of having survived potentially lethal electrical hazards. Perhaps it's not as dangerous as we think? I once plugged in a Marconi TF144H/4S signal generator that I'd been given as 'working' and only when it appeared dead did I check the mains lead. It came with a mating Plessey three-pole mains inlet connector which had presumably been wired up to suit something else. The result was that 'live' went straight to chassis. It's all metal, and I'd touched it several times without feeling so much as a tingle. Saved by rubber-soled shoes and dry carpet, I suppose. The lesson I learned was never to plug anything into the mains before doing some basic checks, no matter what provenance the equipment comes with.
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Phil Optimist [n]: One who is not in possession of the full facts Last edited by Phil G4SPZ; 12th Apr 2015 at 10:22 am. Reason: Grammar |
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12th Apr 2015, 10:54 am | #104 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Jun 2013
Location: East Sussex, UK.
Posts: 3,326
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Re: Your daftest mistakes??
We used to get people buying Eumig projectors whilst on holiday in Germany or Austria, bring them home, cut off the plug and fit a UK plug with the red as live and black as neutral then use the white as earth if they had 3 pin plugs. Sometimes went bang but the chassis/case was live. The RED was the Earth colour used back then on the continent before we all changed to Brown, Blue and Green/yellow.
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12th Apr 2015, 6:03 pm | #105 | ||
Dekatron
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Lynton, N. Devon, UK.
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Re: Your daftest mistakes??
Quote:
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Of course, an insulation test is still good practice. Err... shouldn't that be £3 19/6d and 25/6d? |
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12th Apr 2015, 6:55 pm | #106 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: St.Ippolyts, Hitchin, Hertfordshire QRA IO91UW
Posts: 3,517
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Re: Your daftest mistakes??
Dropping two NOS DA30s when getting them out of the loft
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12th Apr 2015, 7:21 pm | #107 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: W.Butterwick, near Doncaster UK.
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Re: Your daftest mistakes??
Ouch , they are of course worth a mint.
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12th Apr 2015, 7:45 pm | #108 |
Dekatron
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Location: St.Ippolyts, Hitchin, Hertfordshire QRA IO91UW
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Re: Your daftest mistakes??
I was a little grumpy......
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13th Apr 2015, 9:48 am | #109 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Jul 2008
Location: Charmouth, Dorset, UK.
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Re: Your daftest mistakes??
My earliest recollection of falling foul of the electricity supply was when we were on holiday in Bournmouth, must have been in the late '40s. I was mad on anything electrical even then in my early school days and sort out the ex WD radio shop and spent a lot of my holiday probably annoying people in there.
The actual event relates to our digs, round the back of the house there was a wire hanging down the wall not connected to anything, just below it was the end of another wire, I grabbed hold of both ends possibly with the intention of joining them together but never got as far as that as that was my initiation into the world of electric shocks, something that I am now well qualified in. I don't know what it was connected to, presumably a radio, I can only say that it was exceedingly leaky. Peter |
15th Apr 2015, 8:02 am | #110 |
Dekatron
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Worksop, Nottinghamshire, UK.
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Re: Your daftest mistakes??
When I was at school I and a friend found an MES neon bulb and we decided by logic that it was a mains lamp and duly fitted it into an MES lamp holder with screw terminals in order to try it out. To the other end of the cable a 13 amp plug was duly fitted. I plugged it into a 13 amp socket and switched on.
In an instant it made a sound and produced a light out similar to a Victorian powder type photo flash startling both of us. It melted a slot into the side of the MES base. |
4th May 2015, 9:05 pm | #111 |
Heptode
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Ware, Hertfordshire, UK.
Posts: 988
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Re: Your daftest mistakes??
When I was a boy I loved to take things apart and tinker with them.
I had already discovered that if I put the batteries the wrong way round in my toy car it went backwards. So when I was given my Aunt's old, working VTR103 transistor radio it was surely only logical that if I connected the battery in reverse then the voices on the radio would come out in reverse... Not only did it not work in reverse of course, I was upset to find that it now didn't work with the battery the right way round. Cue tears and an explanation from my Engineer Father Andy
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8th May 2015, 10:34 pm | #112 |
Dekatron
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Re: Your daftest mistakes??
No Sparks, shocks or explosions. The heads failed on my three year old Ferguson 3V31. I bough a new Drum and took the lid off in my workshop only to find a tape inside, so I plugged in to mains and ejected tape, then got a phone call, went back and continued replacing the heads. Not a big job and soldered all the wires back. Place the lid over to keep the light out of the sensors. connected the RF lead then attempted to plug it into the mains, only to discover it was already connected! No damage done to me or set, and I still use the same set today.
John Last edited by 60 oldjohn; 8th May 2015 at 10:41 pm. |