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General Vintage Technology Discussions For general discussions about vintage radio and other vintage electronics etc. |
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11th Feb 2018, 11:01 am | #81 | |
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Re: Weird experiments as a beginner in this hobby
Quote:
But sometimes the stores weren't available, so we used to eke more life out of the flat cells by passing 'dirty' d.c. (half-wave) through them. And it worked! But they didn't last long after that.
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11th Feb 2018, 11:06 am | #82 |
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Re: Weird experiments as a beginner in this hobby
Nice to see some correlation between efforts
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11th Feb 2018, 1:15 pm | #83 |
Hexode
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Re: Weird experiments as a beginner in this hobby
One of my earliest experiments was probably my most dangerous!
Intercepting a set of old Christmas lights heading for the bin, I was always impressed by the colours & the amount of light 20 filament lamps gave out. Now, being aged 10 at the time & not having an incling about mains voltage, with 20 fairly lights, rated 12 volts each connected in series ... what that actually meant. All I knew was, I had an old bicycle lamp which had the same screw-type fitment as the old fairy lights, I also wondered how bright one lamp would be if say, I powered it straight from the mains ... I can confidently answer that with 'very bright, albeit, for an incredibly short period of time!' Now, what I wasn't prepared for, was the almighty 'POP', the smell, the fact the switch for the power socket was now welded in the 'On' position, the way the glass envelope was nowhere to be seen, along with the rest of the lamps internals, & the sound of my Father running to the electric cupboard to be greeted by an absent fuse wire (yep, nothing left of it either) with a very pale/shaken son (me) running down the stairs with 'was that lightening?' My Father to this day, still doesn't know how/what happened Joking aside, it was a lucky escape, especially as the bicycle lamp had a metal housing & was pure luck I hadn't wired it 'live' ... My skills have improved you'll be glad to hear, & we tend to play it a little safer these days, well, as much as you can with vintage equipment. Mark |
11th Feb 2018, 2:39 pm | #84 |
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Re: Weird experiments as a beginner in this hobby
The common factor with this thread appears to be that a lot of forum members seem to have this quest for knowledge, and a burning (pardon the pun) desire to experiment, quite often from an early age, and consequently have learned a lot from their deeds. Taking things apart, connecting things up either intentionally or unintentionally just to see what happens. I was exactly the same and luckily am still here to talk about it. I found that when my kids were growing up they didn't have much of an interest in doing that. Maybe society is over protective nowadays, and a lot of kids are denied the "fun" that we had when we were that age. My parents pretty much allowed (trusted?) me to do all sorts of things, and for that I am grateful. They didn't even turn a hair when I started riding motorbikes (something I would have concerns over with my kids, although I have ridden one for forty years). Anyway, I am sure this has all been discussed here before. Regarding the dry cell recharging thing, I am pretty sure that I saw a Philip's portable radio in the eighties which had a battery saver setting which apparently "tickled" the batteries by charging them. Never seen a similar product although a few years back Maplin sold a charger and some special rechargeable 1.5 volt alkaline cells, but they disappeared from the shelves and I have never encountered a similar product.
Alan. |
11th Feb 2018, 4:09 pm | #85 |
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Re: Weird experiments as a beginner in this hobby
Yes, 'seeing what will happen' has gone out of fashion, not just amongst kids, but, it would seem, in the world of research too. Whilst I fully appreciate the point of hypothesis testing, whatever happened to the amateur gentlemen (or 'mad') scientists, who tried out whatever schemes happened to appeal to them, and thus discovered a great deal through sheer serendipity? I wonder how much has been missed since that approach became frowned upon?
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11th Feb 2018, 6:26 pm | #86 |
Nonode
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Re: Weird experiments as a beginner in this hobby
I'm sure when I was a kid I used to knock off the tops of some valves and boil water in them? Something in the back of my mind tells me this?
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11th Feb 2018, 6:43 pm | #87 |
Dekatron
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Re: Weird experiments as a beginner in this hobby
Russell.
The "Dirty DC" chargers I made were not just half-wave rectified, the diode had to be effectively leaky, by incorporating a resistor across it, perhaps 100 Ohm. Anyway that was my understanding of the term. I had a close shave when I was about 12, the woman in the hardware shop opposite used to invite me across to do "French Knitting" which involved four panel-pins hammered into the top of a wooden cotton reel, and you could make a replacement pajama cord. (Yes, it all seems strange to me too in retrospect). Anyway, on one occasion she asked me to look at the shop door bell which had stopped working, it was all wired in transparent "Figure of 8" stranded copper wire stapled to the woodwork. I was in the cupboard under the stairs and found some lose ends of this wire and having only a screwdriver with me, proceeded to strip the insulation with my teeth. It was the mains feed to the bell transformer. It hurt.
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11th Feb 2018, 7:34 pm | #88 | |
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Re: Weird experiments as a beginner in this hobby
Quote:
Even if transmitted parallel to the ground to begin with, any such signal would just continue on at a tangent as the earth's surface curved away... So it was reasoned. |
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11th Feb 2018, 10:25 pm | #89 |
Nonode
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Re: Weird experiments as a beginner in this hobby
Aged about 14-15, I was often experimenting with various SW Mag and PW circuits and articles. My other main likes were radio Caroline and my own 45 rpm (and lesser extent, LPs). My "player" was a Pye transcription deck, garrard mechanics and a simple valve amp inside. This was given to me by my Saturday job employer. It was redundant from the record sales counter in his department store. I played around with the audio side of things and remember feeding my Sandie Shaw 45rpm audio into a valve balanced modulator circuit I had made. I vaguely remember nulling some audio to leave either singing or orchestral backing. So, I assume I must have fed in stereo to it? However, knowing my very limited funds at this time, I don't recall exactly what I did, as stereo cartridges were very expensive!
Another memory was a pair of Pye Telecom intercom units that used the mains wiring as the carrier of the signal. These were in a 10 inch approx cube, with sloping top and coloured dark green. They were ac/dc, using the likes of UY41 and UL41 maybe?? I never did get them working as they were designed. I was trying for comms between my shack (a caravan) and our living room, about 40 feet away. These were also given to me by my Saturday job employer. He had served his apprenticeship with Pye at Cambridge and encouraged me a lot in my hobby. I have a deep gratitude for him also providing an offer of employment so that I could "escape" school aged a few months past 15. He did his utmost to tell me to stay on and gain GCE, but knew that in my heart I would never do it. He is still a friend to this day. I have a lot to thank him for on the structure of my whole life. Rob
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Apprehension creeping like a tube train up your spine - Cymbaline. Film More soundtrack - Pink Floyd Last edited by CambridgeWorks; 11th Feb 2018 at 10:27 pm. Reason: spelling |
11th Feb 2018, 10:43 pm | #90 |
Nonode
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Re: Weird experiments as a beginner in this hobby
Other experiments, aged about 14 involved a pair of 38 set, with home made controls and headset. One was all installed in a pram, complete with 8 foot whip, with a lead acid battery and ht psu. It was first netted up just outside my caravan shack, against the other 38 set within that was powered from the mains psu. Then, Martin, my friend would wander off down the road and communicate with me. I don't think we ever achieved little more than shouting distance! This was probably due to the 2 sets drifting off frequency or the frequent adjustment by us both of the frequency dial to try and "find" each other. We looked upon this as part of our "self training" for the City & Guilds 3 hour RAE written exam. Honest guvnor!
Rob
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Apprehension creeping like a tube train up your spine - Cymbaline. Film More soundtrack - Pink Floyd |
11th Feb 2018, 11:00 pm | #91 |
Dekatron
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Re: Weird experiments as a beginner in this hobby
I used to "improve" peoples eight-track and cassette stereo systems by installing rear speaker(s) and feeding L-R to them so ambient sound came out of them. It did give the illusion of depth, but I didn't realise at the time that connecting a load to the two "hot" ends of a stereo amplifier is not conducive to it's long term survival. Still, this is how we learned our craft.
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11th Feb 2018, 11:04 pm | #92 |
Nonode
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Re: Weird experiments as a beginner in this hobby
Aged about 11, whilst at junior school, our form teacher introduced a sort of science into our curriculum. I remember taking several redundant, "flat" PP? batteries and connecting them in series to power a bicycle dynamo bulb. I could never understand at that time why what should have been over 24v would still make the bulb light only very dimly. My teacher didn't know the answer either. He was just a "form year" teacher. Often the case in those days, but he taught us a lot about life and I still remember some of his sayings to this very day. Such a wonderful person, we all respected him.
My dad worked in refrigeration and to help educate the class for this science lesson sent me to school with a steel cylinder (15" long, about 5" diameter) containing about 3lb of liquid "freon 12" refrigerant. He labelled it with the chemical formula for di-chloro-di-flourometane (I think!) aka Freon 12 Without being exact today, this evaporated at possibly around -40C when released in liquid form. SO, after our lesson, during break, I had great fun chasing other lads around the playground with this and opening the inverted nozzle to give them a chilly blast on their backside! Strange, but true and probably unlimited fines under the F-regs of today! Rob
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Apprehension creeping like a tube train up your spine - Cymbaline. Film More soundtrack - Pink Floyd |
11th Feb 2018, 11:20 pm | #93 |
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Re: Weird experiments as a beginner in this hobby
Never mind Part F, Freon gives you wings. (If you catch my drift).
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11th Feb 2018, 11:26 pm | #94 |
Hexode
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Re: Weird experiments as a beginner in this hobby
Thinking back to another experiment, not nearly so dangerous as the one above, I was given a set of rear lights from a very early Mini which was scrapped.
Hooking these lights to my train set power supply unit was great, I could adjust the brightness by turning the speed control & if you left it running long enough, they would begin to flash! Aged 12 by this stage, I didn't then know the thermal cutout for the train set power supply was a bimetallic strip, in a ceramic housing. I do remember my Father kicking off about interference on the TV again & the very loud 'pop-click-pop-click' through Mum's kitchen radio ... When it dawned on me I was the cause, I left the lights running for longer ... a lot longer, you could smell the transformer & by now the lights were flashing at quite a rate ... Eventually the transformer gave up the ghost, not before blanking out the radio reception, the sound was much like someone welding & apparently the picture on the Telly had worsened! And there was me, wheezing with laughter ... Still makes me chuckle The old lights from the Mini were recently discovered in a box, in the loft, these have since been sold on line. Mark |
12th Feb 2018, 12:03 am | #95 | |
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Re: Weird experiments as a beginner in this hobby
Quote:
It, too, had a thermal cut-out and we used to time our runs in accordance with this. All in all, a handy PSU for messing with battery carbon arc-rods (burned fingers!), wire-wool ignition, much of the other stuff that's been attempted on this thread...
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12th Feb 2018, 1:46 am | #96 |
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Re: Weird experiments as a beginner in this hobby
When I was at school we had found a screw in neon bulb the same thread as a torch bulb.
As it did not light on low voltage we assumed it was a mains lamp and wired up a bulb holder from the science room to a mains plug and tried it. It went off like a Victorian photo flash. It had no internal resistor and the screw base had a slot melted into it. |
12th Feb 2018, 9:27 am | #97 |
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Re: Weird experiments as a beginner in this hobby
I was given an old Marx branded train controller. The output was AC and the speed control was a slider across the outside of the secondary winding, like a flattened variac.
It could do a lot of current, and a short bit of 32swg copper wire would go red hot. This wrapped round the fuse of a banger and dangled out of the bedroom window could be quite dramatic.... Standard fireworks 3-2-1-Zeros were best, Little Demons at a pinch. David
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12th Feb 2018, 9:46 am | #98 |
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Re: Weird experiments as a beginner in this hobby
I had an H&M Duette. Like others this spent a lot of time working as a power supply. I still have that somewhere. Smelled a bit funny. I suspect that was probably selenium rectifiers.
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12th Feb 2018, 10:07 am | #99 | |
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Re: Weird experiments as a beginner in this hobby
Quote:
I was permitted to play with electricity in my bedroom (I think I had more old radios than toys) but was expressly forbidden from bringing a car battery into the house.
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12th Feb 2018, 10:44 am | #100 |
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Re: Weird experiments as a beginner in this hobby
As a primary-school-age kid, I fitted a brake-light to my bike!
From somewhere I found the old brake-light assembly from a Standard Eight [which was a strange car in that it had one brakelight, in the centre of the boot]. An old and battered 6-volt motorcycle battery was also found, fitted to the rear of the bike under the saddle, and I worked out how to use a copper-oxide rectifier given to me by my brother to rectfy the output from the bike dynamo [the old type that had a knurled pulley that ran against the side of the back wheel]. To switch the light on when I applied the bike brakes I cut a small L-shaped tab from an old can, and fixed this to one of the brake blocks. Apply the brakes, the metal tab was pressed against the wheel-rim, earthing the bulbholder and lighting the light, which was mounted on the back of the saddle. It wasn't very bright - I suspect the motorbike battery was well past its best and the homemade 'alternator' setup actually put very little if any charge into it. Shortly after developing this, my jeans started to develop a distinctly moth-eaten appearance. That was when I learned first-hand what battery-acid does to cloth! |