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Old 2nd Jan 2011, 5:00 pm   #21
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Thumbs up Re: Confess your heinous crimes!

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Originally Posted by Martin G7MRV View Post
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
Community Service! What a good idea! We can all be out on the streets & keep an eye open for all this modern stuff that is on its way to the local skip - and rescue it before it gets there - then take it home and renovate it!

Now that's what I call a real service to the community! Just don't ask me what I'm going to do with it afterwards, 'cause I haven't worked that bit out yet; space here is a bit limited . . . .: (

Al.
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Old 2nd Jan 2011, 5:06 pm   #22
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Community Service! What a good idea! We can all be out on the streets & keep an eye open for all this modern stuff that is on its way to the local skip - and rescue it before it gets there - then take it home and renovate it!
The wife read this and has just fainted.....
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Old 2nd Jan 2011, 5:30 pm   #23
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Default Re: Confess your heinous crimes!

Although my misdemeanours were too numerous to be recounted here, I would (like others here) plead in mitigation that they were not acts of wilful destruction, but that I liked to take things apart to find out how they worked - only to discover that they didn't any more! I learned the joy of dismantling things at a very early age. Only later did I develop any skill in (re-)con-structing.

One which does stick in the memory is a Murphy BU183 which we owned. I don't recall what went wrong with it - no doubt eminently fixable, but it ended up being dismantled for components, including part of the plywood case being used for a home-made table-tennis bat. Although as a first attempt at making one it was somewhat less than successful, I do still have it as a reminder of my misspent youth - along with its replacement (made from a more innocent piece of plywood) which I use whenever I play table tennis.
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Old 2nd Jan 2011, 5:43 pm   #24
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Default Re: Confess your heinous crimes!

My father who was in SOE brought back a nice, complete MCR1 spy receiver from the war, with all coils and a PSU. When I reached 15 or so he gave it to me. 2 years later I decided to see if I could turn it into the Rx side of a transceiver, using a 19-set on Tx. I hacked it to pieces to install a 21-way change-over relay (for some bizarre reason). As you can guess it never worked again and I even (real crime) dumped all the bits in the bin.

One good outcome: the PSU was donated a few years ago to the VWTVM in Dulwich, to complete their MCR1 set.

An old cracker motto: "Why do we gain experience but lose almost everything else?"

Happy New Year
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Old 2nd Jan 2011, 6:37 pm   #25
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Talking Re: Confess your heinous crimes!

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An old cracker motto: "Why do we gain experience but lose almost everything else?"
Maybe because you don't get owt for nowt.

However, that does remind me of Lady Skywave's 2010 motto: "Why do you keep gaining unsightly lumps (her phraseology, not mine) but we keep losing valuable space?"

Hopefully, she'll have a more 'user-friendly' version for 2011.

Happy New Year to you all!

Al.
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Old 2nd Jan 2011, 6:47 pm   #26
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When I was 10 years old I had managed to get a few radios and 405 sets working. So I was given a Bush TV12. Despite my best efforts I could only get a raster. I saved the magnets, resistors, and lots of hunts Cxxx. I borrowed my dads .22 riffle to make quick work of the tube and case!
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Old 2nd Jan 2011, 6:50 pm   #27
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What a lovely thread... like most of you, I have air-gunned a good few valves to death (but marvelled at the intricacy of their internal construction, revealed when the boring glass envelope had been shot away) and taken apart several old radios and TVs which would now be valuable. Along the way I learned a lot, and have even still got some of the spare parts I liberated from dismantled sets. When I returned to vintage radio, restoration this time, some years ago I found myself remarkably familiar with the insides of old radios. But probably my most heinous crimes as a boy were dismantling a Wartime Utility Set and a Regentone 353, just because they looked old-fashioned, and a beautiful oak-cased HMV cabinet gramophone that I'd been given by an uncle. In fairness, I had owned and played with the gramophone for some years, but eventually my parents decided it was too big and old-fashioned for our front room, so I was instructed to get rid of it, along with my collection of 78s.

The cabinet made a good bonfire, and the re-entrant horn gave me a good deal of fun. As a listening device it was incredibly sensitive (ear to the inlet, point horn towards neighbours' house and listen to their conversations or TV) or, even better, with mouth placed over the inlet, for blowing the loudest raspberries you have ever heard! Eventually the horn, motor, soundbox and other bits went to the dustman.

Fortunately I’ve since been able to acquire and restore a Utility Set, a Regentone 353, a wind-up gramophone and a replacement collection of 78s. I suppose if everyone kept everything, there would be no antiques industry!

I’ve one last confession. I scrapped a working 19-set High Power Amplifier when I was old enough to know better. I was after the wide air-spaced capacitors to make a transmitting ATU, which I never did finish. Does a confession mean a more lenient sentence, Your Honour?
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Old 2nd Jan 2011, 7:18 pm   #28
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In my teens, like many growing up in the 50s, when war surplus equipment was plentiful, I pulled many ex-WD transmitters and receivers to bits - 38 sets, 1155s, 1154s etc, sometimes just for nuts and bolts, meters, valves, valve holders and anything else fit for the spares box - even wire - chucking the rest away.

With its original role defunct, ex-WD equipment held little fascination, so much of it fell victim to being either pulled to bits as donors, or being heavily modding for it to be of any use - the 19 sets and 1155s being perhaps the best example of plentiful war surplus that could find a role in the 'shacks' of SWLs and radio amateurs.

I suppose my most comprehensive act of what would perhaps today be called an act of vandalsim, was to strip an 1155 down to its bare bones, retaining just the coilpack, tuning caps, IFTs etc, fitting B9G valvholders and valves, with an internal PSU and output stage. This coversion had featured in a Short Wave Magazine article, which highlighted the shortcomings of the 1155 for use for short wave listening.

I fitted a new front panel sprayed battleship grey fitted a speaker, all new lettering, the aim being to create a short-wave radio that looked nothing like an 1155 apart from the dial and excellent tuning mechisim. It was a really lively radio which performed much better than in its original form. I kept it for some years, then sold it at the now defunct Elvaston Rally. With hindsight, I rather wished I'd kept it as it was a major rebuild, but then we all go through periodic phases of collecting and de-cluttering!

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Old 2nd Jan 2011, 7:36 pm   #29
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1) Between 1974 and 1976, modifying a perfectly original Ferguson 208U, by adding an external loudspeaker socket (which I used for tape recording), then drilling the cream urea-formaldehyde cabinet to add an internal loudspeaker on/off switch, then adding another switch and connection for a gramophone pick-up straight to the volume control (note that this is a live chassis set!) Further mod would have been addition of a 3-core mains cable, with the earth lead linked to chassis via a neon bulb and resistor, to indicate if the L and N were swapped, this was an original idea and I was quite pleased with it. But a teacher at school offered a Grundig 2043 set and in the challenge for ownership of this, another boy bargained the 208U from me.

2) In 1975, painting white gloss a Pye Model G, of which the original varnish was distinctly tired. Then drilling out the original aerial/earth, Gram, and Mains connectors (which were on panels of thin Paxolin) in favour of varnished wooden ones - and then annoying my father to the extent that he insisted this radio went out with the next bin collection.

3) Between 1976-1978 practicing hammer-throwing at countless TV tubes. Technique was, Launch the hammer at the screen from behind an old water tank, then dive down quick. Apart from the broken glass, these did at least make disposal of the tubes less hazardous.

4) In 1981 dropping a 2000' reel of 35mm film on my little Philips Philetta, which I used to play in a cinema projection room. This was after surviving trips backwards and forwards strapped to my push bike. I still have the radio, with the crude fibreglass 'utility' repair at the time.

5) Modifying the detector and AF stages of my Ever Ready 5033 radio, started 1976, drilling holes for an extra loudspeaker in the baffle to complement the treble-lacking mains-energised loudspeaker; making an octal-sized hole in the chassis rear member for an external HT/LT power outlet, then losing interest and keeping in a damp place with woodworm. In mitigation, I still have this radio and am gathering together the bits to have running again (it last entertained me as a lash-up in 1990).

That's all I can remember Father, but for these, and other offences I have committed, I am sincerely sorry. I am trying to make restitution by spending inordinate amounts of time on recovery actions for these, the follies of my youth
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Old 2nd Jan 2011, 8:15 pm   #30
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Default Re: Confess your heinous crimes!

You are all a bunch of Barbarians, Heathens! the lot of you

Most, if not all of us, on a forum such as this will have commited some/most/all of these 'crimes'.

As previous posters have said most of this equipment was scrap/worthless or seen as worthless at the time, hindsight is a wonderful thing, besides some of these 'crimes' were commited during the wonderful path of discovery and advancement of our knowledge (in mitigation M'lud).

I like others have been 'guilty as charged' for quite a few of the aforementioned 'crimes', but for my penance I was sentenced to 20+ years of repairs to customers equipment, just as Iam sure others on here have paid for their 'sins' either by repairing and/or restoring many times more equipment than they ever destroyed in their youth, 'closing for the defence'

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Old 2nd Jan 2011, 8:43 pm   #31
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Default Re: Confess your heinous crimes!

Apart from being guilty of destroying a great deal of what would now be highly collectable gear (including leaving a very early Marconi microphone in a very damp shed) I greatly regret not having saved some really rare items.

When I was about 11 years old, I used to buy defunct sets from a local TV shop, and do them up - some for my own use, and some for a small profit. The shop piled all these sets up in an attic, and I was allowed to take my pick (at £1.00 each). Naturally, I suppose, I chose the most modern examples (also paying some regard to cosmetic condition), and completely ignored what I'm now aware were several mirror-lid sets and others of the same era, as being too old-fashioned, heavy and deeply buried. They were undoubtedly scrapped when the shop closed.

However, that's just how such items have become rare and collectable. I clearly remember (at about the same age) being shown by an elderly friend a 1920s supercharged Bentley roadster, which was abandoned in his barn by his late parents, when they bought something newer and 'better'. As far as he knew, it was still theoretically in running order. No idea what eventually happened to that!
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Old 2nd Jan 2011, 9:15 pm   #32
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Default Re: Confess your heinous crimes!

As a kid finding and stoning a 14" Pye VT4 to death. You should have seen that tube go though it was both loud and spectacular. As a teenager tried and failed to get a very smart condition HMV1376 working and ended up ripping it to peices in rage. Have since bought two from John Evans so don't feel so guilty about this.
Also as a teenager losing it with a Bush TR130 and an old Ferranti transistor which belonged to my Aunty and ditching both radios. A few years later I scrapped and threw out some good tellies such as a Bush TV106 and the Murphy version of a Bush TV135. Do these heinous crimes mean that I am beyond redemption?
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Old 2nd Jan 2011, 9:22 pm   #33
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Default Re: Confess your heinous crimes!

My grandparents had an old valved 1940's radio which got taken to pieces, resistors snipped out, and old Gramophone where I undid the motor windings. I would have been about 10 at the time,

Later i messed around and sort of butchered the Korting tape recorder but not quite to the extent that i couldn't save in later life.

I suppose my biggest regret was removing the innards of my grandparents 1950's Ecko to put a modern TV in it.

The saying Youth is wasted on the young is very very apt in this thread.
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Old 2nd Jan 2011, 9:54 pm   #34
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Hi,
I had a Bush TV43 as a teenager in the late sixties which worked reasonably well in a darkened room but had an appetite for ECL80 frame o/p valves. At the time "Psychedelic" was the latest buzzword and the "groovy" colour of the time was dayglo orange. I painted the cabinet this bright orange and the tube mask silver then the bakelite knobs & speaker grille red & green plus some other forgettable colour. Fortunately that model didn't become a "classic", AFAIK.
I've still got a square Bush badge from a console set on which I painted the "bush" green & the "pot" brown on a white background.
Cheers & A Happy New Year, Pete
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Old 2nd Jan 2011, 9:59 pm   #35
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When I was small, my father had an Ekco AD38. I thought the innards looked a bit like an oil refinery and they ended up in my sand pit as a small-scale replica of Canvey Island. My father wasn't happy. He was even less happy when I sawed the cabinet in half. I would love to restore an AD38 to make up for my sins, but they never seem to turn up.
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Old 2nd Jan 2011, 10:00 pm   #36
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Hi

Having read the afore mentioned confessions I am now in tears
I too am guilty of many of the already described deeds -
I used to get old valves and radios from the annual scout jumble sale and enjoyed ripping the radios apart and using valves as 'hand grenades' - some of which I am sure now are rare and valuable.
Modifying a number of 19 sets , complete base stations - Canadian & British, but not pulling them apart.


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Old 2nd Jan 2011, 10:37 pm   #37
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When I was a kid everyone in the village where I lived used to donate their old unwanted TV/radio/record player etc to me knowing that I loved playing around with them. Not once did I remember anyone say "now watch out for the high voltages lad". Health and safety were in the far distant future. As a result many of them were subject to hours of stripping down, because at the time, due to lack of funds or suppliers in our area, it was the only way to get hold of components. So I am guilty of ruining many an old set, although at the time, they would have all been dumped anyway. One thing that is a constant reminder of my errors is the hole drilled in the perspex front panel of my Leak Troughline tuner for a stereo indicator sometime in the eighties.
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Old 3rd Jan 2011, 12:44 am   #38
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My worst 'crime' was when I was about 14 (1967) and went to a jumble sale looking for either an old clock or an old radio (I played about with clocks as well). Not finding anything, I was just about to leave when I spied a large box under one of the tressel tables that had some interesting knobs on it (the box, not the table)! Fighting my way between the legs of eager bargain hunters, I emerged with a very old (to me) radio with a lift-up lid, three very large valves and an interesting hexagonal coil. I paid my sixpence and went home. Further investigation on my workbench revealed the plans for a Mullard 'Master Three' and two original Radio Receiving Licences dated 1930 and 1931. Valves were PM1HF, PM1LF and PM2.

Well I knew enough to be able to get the set running on two valves (I left out the PM2) by using my stabilized power supply for the fillaments (it could only supply enough for two valves) and a B126 for the HT. I repaired the Resistance/Capacitance unit (as it was called in the diagram) and it worked quite well but I got bored with it and pulled it to bits. I used the case as a toolbox and the rest of the bits eventually got disposed of. Something made me keep the original receiving licences but regrettably they got lost during a house move.

I plead guilty your honour but I have been on the lookout for another one ever since I realised (about 10 years later) what I had scrapped...and I have restored lots of radio's since......


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Old 3rd Jan 2011, 12:51 am   #39
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Question Re: Confess your heinous crimes!

Despite my earlier attempts at trying to inject a little humour into this subject , I've has a few further thoughts . . . in a serious vein.

Since so many of us here seem to have confessed to so much - and much of that appears to be in common amongst many - is it not completely out of the question to suggest that our youthful mis-deeds were simply the result of our psychological make-up; that during those youthful years it simply had to find an outlet - in the way that it did? For example, it wasn't just old radios (etc.) that I used to dismantle and / or modify (out of curiosity?). There were bicycles, old clocks, dumped old cars, even rummaging around derelict old buildings. I still vividly recall the thrill of that last exploit: the burning question "I might find something useful in there!" And that still lingers even today: if I see a skip on the side of the road, I have to try hard not to 'just have a quick look'.

So, in conclusion, I submit that we are all simple victims of our own psychological composition; something we had - and continue to have - no choice about.

Anyway, that's my excuse. Yours?

Al. [Skywave]
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Old 3rd Jan 2011, 12:54 am   #40
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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!
Greg
That reminds me, In a previous life I worked for Plessey (Communications Systems). A colleague told me that he was once tasked with destroying some NOS but obsolete telephones - candlesticks. He did have a sideline in house clearance though, and I still have a BTH form A crystal set.
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