Confess your heinous crimes!

[Denis G4DWC]

I'd forgotten about it until I read a few more of these posts. I was once given a very nice Cossor three valve set in a splendid Oak box. I would have been about 16 at the time. Not sure of the model but it had a lift up lid with two large coils with Toggle switches on the top. There were three valves with the screen grid valve lying horizontally through an alloy plate.
It was a really nice box.... Shame it had a radio in it. Not for long though it became quite well travelled. I used is a top box on my BSA C15 and A65 Motorbikes for many years to carry the myriad of tools needed for roadside repairs.... I haven't got the box anymore but I still have an A65 motorbike

Denis

[BobGreen]

I did not molest my R107 and sold it on intact at the age of 16 by which time I had zapped a number of "useless obsolete" 4V valves with my catapult. Dozens of 6.3V bottles were treated kindly and given to a good home when my mother moved house. I was given a badly built comms RX by a master at school. It was based on a Denco turret tuner and, unlike the R107, reached 30MHz. It seemed to perform badly so I ripped it apart but never got round to the intended re-build.

[G4XWDJim]

I swapped my tandem when I was about 12 for 3 Scott Taggart ST something or others, stripped them down to make one valve and crystal sets to sell to kids at school.

Jim

[G4XWDJim]

For a joke I was photographed pouring about 100 EF80s into a concrete mixer to mix with the mortar ready to have an electronic base for the patio I was building. I wish I could find the photo. Quite a few broke but lots didn't.

Jim

[sentinel040]

Not totally my crime other than allowing it to happen - honestly m'lud.

From the age of about 10 onwards I became increasingly interested in radios and by the time I was in the 2nd form at Grammar school I had progressed to tv's as well. I used to have the use of a brick built shed at the bottom of the garden, this was a former coal house that my father had extended and fitted with windows - how I wish I had its like now. Anyway, our house had a right of way at the back serving the garages that were also at the bottom of the gardens and often when messing about the back gate was left open and my childhood friends wandered in as they wanted. I had started to amass quite a pile of bits from various radios and TV's with which I had "experimented" (i.e disected). The girl who lived next door and her friend from a little further down the road took a bit of a fancy to trying to smash some of the old tubes and valves they saw "lying around". Having been a soft touch for the lasses even at that age I eventually gave in. About half a dozen crt's and over a hundred valves met their demise at the hands of stones thrown by them over a week one summer. I remember one of the lasses climbing up onto the flat roof of the shed to "bomb" a couple of tubes that were on the ground below. Those old 90 degree tubes went with quite a bang!

Ho hum, I have been fully rehabilitated and made ammends since......

[G8VAT Wolfman]

? No chance, I value my freedom.

[Bob_Moss]

My next-door neighbours heinous crime!

The young lad next door took an interest in wirelesses and amassed a reasonable collection of 40s woodies, some top of the range sets as well.

When he left home his dad came round with a box. "Now Geoffreys left we've taken all his radios to the tip because we haven't the room, we kept all the valves for you though".

I tried to look grateful as I accepted the box full of interesting valves (mostly B7 and Octal).

[Valvepower]

Hi,

I’d like the following misdemeanours to be taken into consideration:

At the age of 6 the taking apart and wrecking of a rather nice early 1950’s Hornby train set – my dear old Mom still reminds me of this to this day.

At the age of 14 sending of two perfectly good PX4’s to that valve box in the sky so to speak.

At the age of 12 the complete destruction of a perfectly good 1920’s base board radio with PM or similar valves.

Terry.

[MrElectronicman]

OK my turn.

My parents has a very nice old America Pilot console radio, had Long Medium and Short wave, probably was wedding present. We used it to listen to Sputnik in about 1957 I think it was.

I was trying to use the cabinet as a speaker enclosure, but could not get the speaker to work. Found out later that a lot of radios at that time used electromagnets for the speakers which doubled as smoothing chokes.

So my Dad and I cut the cabinet into two with a saw, and threw away the chassis. Attached is a photo of one much like it.

AHHHHHH!

[mrmagnetophon]

i tore up a not working sony tube reel to reel for parts, that haunts me i should have kept it together
-Chris

[GLENZ32]

I've been reading through this thread and so far I've been rather amused at peoples methods of distruction to Tv's/radios/valves... I too am guilty of these activities....

As a teenager me and a couple of mates used to throw 'working' old colour and mono TV sets off the roof of my parents house (while they weren't home) onto the concrete pad below! And we made sure the mess was cleaned up properly afterwards!

We set fire to a couple and stood back and watched them burn.... I did film one of them with an JVC video camera and I still have the footage of when a National M4 26 inch CRT exploded from the heat of the flames!....The scary thing is that we were standing not that far away from it either....My mate got a a slither of glass in his hand and I dam near s**t my pants! But it was a real buzz to play the footage back afterwards..we were all sore from laughing too much.

Pouring water in the back of going sets and throwing hammers into the chassis's while turned on also... One set we poured water into at the same time on whatever channel that was showing at the time on the screen was some old guy standing up and looking at his leaking roof with water going into the bucket on the floor! Uncanny!! (I have this on video by the way)...

TV valves made good target practice and I used to make these 'capacitor bombs'...basically get a valve and crack it at the base and slide the innards out by the pins, put the capacitor inside and seal with some Selleys no more gaps then apply some AC voltage well above the rated voltage and watch it explode through the shed's window.. The huge bang with the sound of shattering glass was neat...hehe

I do regret destroying all the mono valve sets, most of them had minor faults and I could have easily saved them...but that was a long time ago.....

Cheers
Glen

[yampy187]

When I was about 11 there used to be an old derelict factory across the road from my mums house and on the roof there was a shed that was full of what I now know as philips g11s and decca bradfords and countless thorn 3000 sets and millions of spare panels and CRTs. Me and a mate had a fun Saturday afternoon chucking them off the roof through the glass roof below. If only I knew then what I know now

[Darren-UK]

Posters in this thread. You have pleaded guilty to the wanton destruction of vintage radio and television apparatus and parts thereof contrary to section 230. v of the Crimes Against Vintage Technology Act of 1963. There is only one sentence I can pass upon you.....................

(Usher places black cap (Hunts) upon Judge's head)

"Heinous Crimes thread: The sentence of the Court upon you, is that you be taken from this place to a lawful prison and thence to a place of execution and that you be hanged by the neck until you are dead; and that your body be afterwards buried within the precincts of the prison in which you shall be confined before your execution. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul....Amen."