Confess your heinous crimes!

[Martin G7MRV]

Alright, so Im not talking 'real' crimes here but all of us on here love old radio and electronic equipment, and generally can't bear to see it damaged or destroyed. But I'm also sure, that like me, many of you have 'skeletons in the cupboard' from your early or pre-vintage mad days, where you did such naughty things to equipment, and now, with retrospect, realise the gravity of your crime, and would like to confess your sins before your peers.

So, I will start. I was just a teenager at the time, and my two loves were - radio, and air-rifles. An engineer my dad worked with gave me huge amounts of electronic kit, and stacks of old magazines. One big box contained hundreds of valves, including (although I didnt know at the time) a pair of very rare mullard G-M tubes. At the same time, I also bought a nice new tin of Eley Wasp .22 pellets.

I'm sure you can guess the result.

[MichaelR]

Age 12, I owned a massive heavy R107 , which in hindsight was working perfectly. Unfortunately I listened to a school mate aged 15 who I thought was an expert ( relative to me) and he advised mods that would massively improve its performance. I completely wrecked it by the time I had finished.

Mike

[AlanBeckett]

Originally Posted by MichaelR

I completely wrecked it by the time I had finished.

Mike

I did the same with an 1155
Alan

[murphyv310]

My Dad had loads of valves, common at the time the likes of 6V6 6L6 and other large valves. I always had a load in my bedroom to lob out of the window during the night at those noisy cats that were screaming their heads off!

[Omegaman]

Hi All,

Similar to Martin.

Late 70's.
Abandoned British Relay (I think) repeater station.
About 20 boxes full of little glass bottles that said "GEC KT66" on them.
Air rifle.
Hours of fun.
Lots of broken glass.........
DOH!!

You live and learn.... Usually the hard way!

[Martin G7MRV]

Originally Posted by Omegaman

Hi All,

About 20 boxes full of little glass bottles that said "GEC KT66" on them.
Air rifle.
Hours of fun.
Lots of broken glass.........

Its such a satisfying 'pop' they make as that little lump of lead goes through them!


There was also the dozen or so walkmans and ghetto blasters that unfortunately 'broke' in our house (usually cos i knew how to take them apart, but at that time not how to fix them!) which had a surprising second life as part of my collection of spare parts...

[peter_scott]

When I was about 10 I bought a nice Fellophone sloping front receiver at a jumble sale. It was similar to the model below but I think it had 4 valves although the valves were missing. I kept it for a while but didn't know what valves to use and I eventually broke it up and cut up the ebonite panel for various useless purposes. I still have the wooden case but, alas nothing else remains. (No, I tell a lie. I still have a couple of pairs of headphones that came with it.)

Peter

[M0FYA Andy]

As a schoolboy back in the late 60's my parents bought me a No.19 set as a combined birthday and Christmas present. It was pristine, and complete with the dynamotor power supply, aerial variometer etc. It came from one of the surplus shops in Manchester, long since buried under the Arndale Centre, which were stacked to the ceilings with all sorts of wondrous things I could only drool over on pocket money.
But then I did all the standard 'improvements' to the A-set receiver, which involved ripping out the B-set, the intercom and the A-set transmitter.
I still have it as a horrible reminder of what not to do............
Andy

[Herald1360]

I've still got the green wooden toolbox I "made" when I was at school (though not in use now)- it started life as the case of a Vidor CN381. It's arguably better than the case of the one I got a year or so ago to restore...... but it does have a nice locking latch on it that started life on a long gone windup gramophone box.

My present (now much battered) electronics toolbox started life as the box for a nice old true rms voltmeter I bought at a ham junksale in the '70s. The vacuum thermocouples have long gone, though I did sell on the Unipivot Galvanometer a few years ago.

TV tube disposal.... place face down in hole about as deep as tube, lob bricks until desired effect achieved. (The hole limits the spread of the flying glass to less than the lobbing distance.)

My most regretted act was more one of omission... we moved house when I was 13 and I left behind a lovely home built 4-valve (PM series) 1920s TRF radio which I had failed to get to work, because it was quite large and very inaccessibly stored. I saw it once more- it had been passed on by the new owners to a young lad next door but one whom I still played with occasionally. It wasn't a happy sight by then

I also "improved" a Stereo Pye Black Box (the long low sideboard type from the early '60s) by mounting the AT6 on a plinth and the 8" speakers in separate boxes and replacing the amplifier by a Truvox TSA100 and matching FM tuner (complete with Mullard module stereo decoder added inside). The cabinet was junked. At least I kept the original 2*7W ECL82 P-P amplifier- it was sold a few years ago when I first discovered eBay.

[Martin G7MRV]

Originally Posted by Herald1360

TV tube disposal.... place face down in hole about as deep as tube, lob bricks until desired effect achieved. '(

I can only hope they never dig up the patch of rough ground behind my mums house... (theres the remains of an Imperial typewriter in that hole as well)

[mark pirate]

My fathers brother was always bringing me old radios to "tinker" with, i had quite a high success rate repairing them (i was about 9 or 10 at the time)
Among the sets he bought was a black philco peoples set, i managed to get it working, but it was very quiet, so i decided the problem lay with the speaker?
Anyway, i can't remember how, but i got a real belt off it!
I was so angry, i threw it out of my bedroom window
It was very satisfying to watch it smash to pieces on the path below.
I have since bought another to restore out of guilt, this however cost me £150!
So i will be treating it with the respect it deserves.

Mark

[AC/HL]

Mo too

Originally Posted by AlanBeckett

I did the same with an 1155
Alan

[Skywave]

Originally Posted by AlanBeckett

I did the same with an 1155
Alan

Ditto.

Al. [Skywave]

[AC/HL]

Where do I start?
TV tubes float faceplate up in water. A brick dropped from safely behind a wall produces the same effect as a depth charge. In a fire, a valve envelope takes on the same shape as the anode.
Many old TV's scrapped for the focus magnets. To be fair they were dumped by the hundred then, no such thing as recycling.
Radio's similarly including an Ekco Cyclops (it was a long time ago, memory is vague).
An acquaintance once mentioned (this is particularly convoluted) getting old TV's to produce a raster of sorts, piling them up, then setting fire to the pile and watching them expire one by one
Disposing of two complete QuadII systems and a 401 turntable for peanuts.
In the golden days of Government surplus shops, not acquiring a brand new 19 set with English and Russian markings for an (unaffordable on pocket money) pittance.
Never mind, we're told that time travel is just around the corner.......

[M0FYA Andy]

Bill,
If you had acquired that 19 set you would probably have done exactly what I did with mine!
Andy

[Jeremy M0RVB]

I guess I was about 6 when I decided that I wanted to see more clearly inside the valves of an old radio - so removed the glass off each. I gained a thump due to the glass scattered everywhere (fortunately outside)

About the same age I discovered and summarily dismantled my grandad's home-made wireless - the sort built on a wood base with cables laid out like a schematic. But at least I had permission that time!

I also tried to turn a pair of binoculars into a kaleidoscope by filling them with pebbles...

[Skywave]

Alas! To 99% of all the 'crimes', as confessed to above, I am guilty of same, m'lud!
19 set; R1155; HRO (quantity 2); various domestic radios and TVs; valves & air-rifles, assorted bits of ex-WD & Amateur Radio equipment, etc.

However - and in mitigation - I plead diminished responsibility in my defence. I was very young, ignorant of what the future, many years from then, would hold for me. I think that it is also fair to state that the prospective value and usage of much of that stuff was then regarded as very nearly zero; hindsight is a wonderful thing.
OTOH, I was very keen to learn about electronics and radio. Not all of said confessed acts of destruction were, per se, deliberate acts of vandalism as such. Many were 'exercises' in self-education; yes, I too was armed with F.J. Camm's 'Wireless Encyclopaedia' and was a proficient reader of Practical Wireless. That 'apprenticeship', in turn, started me off on the long journey into electronics as a form of employment, from which many - including myself - have gained, and not only financially.

Finally, I would like to state that the vast majority of all that equipment would have probably have ended up on the local tip anyway - but not via my hands. At least something was gained by it all passing through my ownership.

And with that, I throw myself on the mercy of this court!

Al. [Skywave]

[audiomagpie]

In the mid 1970's, when I was aged about 10 and onwards, most relatives/neighbours etc who were throwing out old radio's & TV's usually chucked them in my direction, knowing that I was a compulsive fiddler with such kit. Everything eventually got dismantled (out of curiousity). An old thatched and timbered house that became derelict next door had about an acre of land which we used to play on. That became the area where many old CRT's met their ending face on with a house brick, valves being lined up on a wall shot with a catapault.

But my biggest regret: I was given what I believe (from memory) to be a Murphy A52 (see http://www.classicwireless.btinternet.co.uk/mu38x.htm ) and a great stack of 'Murphy News' magazines, all from an ex Murphy employee. Can't remember what happend to the radio but when I left home in 1989 I think the magazines went out with the old newspapers which the local Scouts were collecting at the time.

Also as a BT engineer in the early 1980's, remember seeing many 300 type telephones being chucked in the yard skip as local factories had their old Strowger PABX's updated to the modern electronic systems. Could have enjoyed an early retirement if I'd kept a few of these!

It was all just considered worthless old junk at the time.

The only good news in this story is that the timbered house was later dismantled and using the original wooden frame was rebuilt somewhere in Milton Keynes!

Greg

[Martin G7MRV]

A very good defence!

As it seems we are all guilty of these offences, i would request that the higher judge of this court be lenient, and move towards a verdict of 'equipment death by misadventure', and accordingly sentence us all to community service

[Tractorfan]

Hi,
Although I don't remember wilfully destroying stuff (I used to get very upset as a kid watching things getting wrecked on TV programmes in the name of comedy, and I just freaked when The Who destroyed their guitars & amps. I was a br for taking things to bits and then losing the parts and screws. Another "sin" was tweaking the IFTs of an otherwise perfectly OK radio "just a little bit to make it better", then "just a little more" until the alignment was completely spoilt and it never worked again. Luckily, I was kept away from the family Beethoven radiogram.
I suppose my failure to grab an old 14" Pye VT4 TV in beautiful condition from the hands of the binman as I watched him take it away must count against me. But I plead that my Mum saying: "You've got enough junk in your bedroom already!" was a factor. And I'm sorry. Very very sorry.
Cheers, Pete