While working on TV I got all the usual shocks. The worst one on B&W
TV was HT on a Rediffusion set. EHT was a much higher voltage but very
low current. I never got a EHT shock from the very early colour sets I
worked on with DER. I saw one of the other engineers get a shock from
a colour TV EHT supply. It floored him. I had a tube discharge
occasionally from new tubes (still boxed) arriving from the supplier.
I always held on to the tube but swore at Mullard. Years later I
started working on computer peripherals. I got a shock from an Ampex
spooler motor servo when it decided to spool in the magnetic tape.
That was a very bad shock and I had to have a lie down for a while.
Everybody laughed!
As to EHT shocks yep a few colour Tubes were dropped owing the charge rebuilding on CRTs made a bloody mess being b dropped on the works floor!
Many says that RF burns are the worse and tend not to heal up.
On Wed, 16 Aug 2023 16:37:01 +0100, MB wrote:
Many says that RF burns are the worse and tend not to heal up.
When I was working on flight simulators (between TV jobs) they were using genuine aircraft components and 400Hz power and I accidentally brushed a finger against a live 400Hz terminal and it burnt a small hole in the skin but it didn't need to heal because it cooked it!
In article <gghpdids1qal9vg3g20b92vbeah9mr01ac@4ax.com>, Stephen
Wolstenholme <stephenwolstenholme30@outlook.com> scribeth thus
While working on TV I got all the usual shocks. The worst one on B&W
TV was HT on a Rediffusion set. EHT was a much higher voltage but very
low current. I never got a EHT shock from the very early colour sets I >>worked on with DER. I saw one of the other engineers get a shock from
a colour TV EHT supply. It floored him. I had a tube discharge
occasionally from new tubes (still boxed) arriving from the supplier.
I always held on to the tube but swore at Mullard. Years later I
started working on computer peripherals. I got a shock from an Ampex >>spooler motor servo when it decided to spool in the magnetic tape.
That was a very bad shock and I had to have a lie down for a while. >>Everybody laughed!
Many years ago around 1977 "ish" i had to help the aerial rigger out in
a TV shoppe where i worked at that time.
This old chap was bedridden so his relatives thought a TV in his bedroom would be a great idea so aerial rigged and cable was to come in thru a
metal window frame so i had the drill in hand and to do this had to
reach out of the window and move the ladder sideways a bit.
Drill was a metal cased one, ladder was in soft damp earth as it was
raining a lot at that time and yes you can guess what happened next the moment my hand went around the ladder i was being very badly and very painfully shocked so much so i couldn't move anything couldn't move
speak even just everything seems to be vibrating at 50 Hz inc me.
Fortunately the chap i was working with came into the room and saw what
was going on and put 2 and more together rapidly and unplugged the drill
and at that point i collapsed on the floor was taken to hospital and
told that if it had gone on any longer the heart would have possibly
stopped pumping so took a day off work and then back to work.
The reason what it happened was that the house was still wired in the
old type of Rubber mains cable that the earth had come undone at the distribution board the man from the electric co thought it might have
never been connected on the upstairs ring main but matey had nothing in
his room to be earthed to as such so had been living like that for many years a thick carpet was possibly a good insulator!
So the arsehole who ran the firm saw this as a bit of a joke and said
that in the past he had to kick the odd drill out of his hand and i
covered the handle of d said drill with insulating tape which he told me
to man up and take it off, i then lost my rag with him and told him
either i leave the tape on or stick the 'effing drill up his arse and he didn't back down so i did just that lucky for he it wasn't turning i
then helped myself to a months pay and told him to go fuck himself.
The aerial rigger came out in sympathy and so did the other engineer
owing to his attitude he died around a couple of years later and the
bloody building burnt down owing to duff wiring!
As to EHT shocks yep a few colour Tubes were dropped owing the charge rebuilding on CRTs made a bloody mess being b dropped on the works
floor!
--
Tony Sayer
Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a keyboard, and he will reveal himself.
While working on TV I got all the usual shocks. The worst one on B&W
TV was HT on a Rediffusion set. EHT was a much higher voltage but very
low current. I never got a EHT shock from the very early colour sets I
worked on with DER. I saw one of the other engineers get a shock from
a colour TV EHT supply. It floored him. I had a tube discharge
occasionally from new tubes (still boxed) arriving from the supplier.
I always held on to the tube but swore at Mullard. Years later I
started working on computer peripherals. I got a shock from an Ampex
spooler motor servo when it decided to spool in the magnetic tape.
That was a very bad shock and I had to have a lie down for a while.
Everybody laughed!
On 16/08/2023 19:34, The Other John wrote:
On Wed, 16 Aug 2023 16:37:01 +0100, MB wrote:
Many says that RF burns are the worse and tend not to heal up.
When I was working on flight simulators (between TV jobs) they were using
genuine aircraft components and 400Hz power and I accidentally brushed a
finger against a live 400Hz terminal and it burnt a small hole in the
skin
but it didn't need to heal because it cooked it!
I've had a few mains shocks - the most stupid was the other year when I
was changing some light fittings which had Philips Hue bulbs in them.
These tend to be left permanently powered on, and the individual bulbs on
a circuit are turned on/off/dimmed by app. Each time I did a batch of fittings, I turned off both the wall switch and the lighting circuit at
the "fuse box". After a break I did some more. And I made the elementary mistake of thinking "the lights are not lit, so the circuit must be off at the wall". As my screwdriver touched the live screw on the terminal block
I must have had contact with the screwdriver and also with the neutral.
It's the first time I've had a mains shock on a circuit with an RCD, and
the fact that it tripped meant that I didn't have to pull my hand way to break the circuit.
Others in the past have been on a non-tripping circuit before the days of RCDs - eg when I touched the terminals where the mains cable of a tape recorder was soldered to the main power switch. The switch was turned off, but the feed to it wasn't...
The worst was from that same tape recorder. It used valves, so it had an
HT feed which was higher than mains: I later measured the terminals that I had touch as about 400 V AC (before the diodes and smoothing). That F-ing hurt: my arm throbbed for several hours.
The most bizarre was when I was unplugging the TV aerial lead from a USB
TV tuner on my (earthed) computer. I had the metal screen of the aerial in one hand and the other hand on the computer, and I got a very noticeable tingle. I measured about 150 V between aerial screen and mains earth,
using a high-resistance voltmeter. I went round all my electronic
equipment that was connected together: aerial went to TV, VCR and
computer; TV, VCR, hifi were all connected by audio phono plugs. By unplugging things in turn I eventually tracked it down to the TV: one with
a CRT. With nothing connected to it apart from the mains lead, there was about 150 V between its aerial screen and/or aerial signal pin, and mains earth. I measured my body resistance (about 300 k ohms) and made up
resistors to mimic this (I didn't fancy using my body again for testing,
the tingle was that bad) and measured about 50 V with a simulated body between TV and mains earth. There was evidently a fairly high safety
resistor in series, but still enough current flowed though the "test human body" to give a voltage that was very noticeable.
After that, I attached a wire between the aerial plug of the aerial amp
PSU and the mains earth pin for the amp's PSU, so the whole signal earth
for the TV/VCR/hifi/computer setup was earthed at that one point (didn't
want multiple earths in case of hum loops).
That's the problem with modern electronic equipment: live and neutral but
not earth, so if there *is* any leakage, and there is insufficient safety resistance, you're going to feel it.
I suppose I was unlucky that when I touched that aerial plug initially, I
was also touching an earthed computer. Any other device would have had two wires only so there would have been no voltage difference between the 80 V
on the aerial and something else.
The TV you mention was probably one of the live chassis types, though some were actually half mains voltage but it made little difference as you still felt it even with a capacitor linked earth on the aerial socket.
Near me is a line of big pylons, and as I walk near them and hold out my
aluminium white cane, and run my finger along the exposed metal bits aI can >feel/hear the hum from the wires. There is a house almost under the wires in >one place and its changed hands many many times. Apparently people get
shocks inside it and it is always dusty in the house, one assumes the static >clumps the microscopic dust together giving the appearance of more than >usual dust.
It was built 10 feet too close to the wires apparently but was declared
safe.
Brian
While working on TV I got all the usual shocks. The worst one on B&W
TV was HT on a Rediffusion set. EHT was a much higher voltage but very
low current. I never got a EHT shock from the very early colour sets I
worked on with DER. I saw one of the other engineers get a shock from
a colour TV EHT supply. It floored him. I had a tube discharge
occasionally from new tubes (still boxed) arriving from the supplier.
I always held on to the tube but swore at Mullard. Years later I
started working on computer peripherals. I got a shock from an Ampex
spooler motor servo when it decided to spool in the magnetic tape.
That was a very bad shock and I had to have a lie down for a while.
Everybody laughed!
I presume live chassis sets had problems because the one connection to
them, apart from the mains lead, was for the aerial. If the aerial
screen was as mains or half-mains voltage, I presume it could not be
earthed and had to have an insulating cover over the normally metal
Belling Lee plug. I remember some aerial leads where the plug was flat
rather than cylindrical, with a rubber/plastic cover over it.
On Wed, 16 Aug 2023 14:31:52 +0100, Stephen Wolstenholme <stephenwolstenholme30@outlook.com> wrote:File:ICL_EDS80_at_Vintage_Computer_Festival_(1).jpg
While working on TV I got all the usual shocks. The worst one on B&W TV
was HT on a Rediffusion set. EHT was a much higher voltage but very low >>current. I never got a EHT shock from the very early colour sets I
worked on with DER. I saw one of the other engineers get a shock from a >>colour TV EHT supply. It floored him. I had a tube discharge
occasionally from new tubes (still boxed) arriving from the supplier. I >>always held on to the tube but swore at Mullard. Years later I started >>working on computer peripherals. I got a shock from an Ampex spooler
motor servo when it decided to spool in the magnetic tape. That was a
very bad shock and I had to have a lie down for a while. Everybody
laughed!
I've just remembered another "classic" shock from my mainframe computer
days. Some sites had rooms full of ICL EDS80 for data storage. Each
EDS80 was connected to three phase but only used one phases. Operators
would sometimes take a short cut through the gap between two EDS80 by
leaning on both drives. Just occasionally adjacent EDS were connected to different phases. Thank the lord that the gray/orange cover paint was
quite thick. See
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
It wasn't me but one of the operators. She was very unhappy. It took me
a while to convince her that I didn't do any of the power wiring.
We got the local electricity board engineers for that.
On Thu, 17 Aug 2023 14:56:16 +0100, steve1001908 wrote:
On Wed, 16 Aug 2023 14:31:52 +0100, Stephen Wolstenholme <stephenwolstenholme30@outlook.com> wrote:
While working on TV I got all the usual shocks. The worst one on B&W TV >>was HT on a Rediffusion set. EHT was a much higher voltage but very low >>current. I never got a EHT shock from the very early colour sets I
worked on with DER. I saw one of the other engineers get a shock from a >>colour TV EHT supply. It floored him. I had a tube discharge
occasionally from new tubes (still boxed) arriving from the supplier. I >>always held on to the tube but swore at Mullard. Years later I started >>working on computer peripherals. I got a shock from an Ampex spooler >>motor servo when it decided to spool in the magnetic tape. That was a >>very bad shock and I had to have a lie down for a while. Everybody >>laughed!
I've just remembered another "classic" shock from my mainframe computer days. Some sites had rooms full of ICL EDS80 for data storage. EachFile:ICL_EDS80_at_Vintage_Computer_Festival_(1).jpg
EDS80 was connected to three phase but only used one phases. Operators would sometimes take a short cut through the gap between two EDS80 by leaning on both drives. Just occasionally adjacent EDS were connected to different phases. Thank the lord that the gray/orange cover paint was
quite thick. See
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
It wasn't me but one of the operators. She was very unhappy. It took me
a while to convince her that I didn't do any of the power wiring.
We got the local electricity board engineers for that.
I discovered the Mullard MW6-2 holds it's 25kv charge for quite a while.
Yes, when I worked at Eddystone Radio they were still telling the tale
As to the ICL disk drives, whatever was ANY "phase" voltage doing
connected to the case? I'd want the electrician's hide for that, even if
he did work for the Board.
"MB" <MB@nospam.net> wrote in message news:ubn699$5vdg$1@dont-email.me...
As to the ICL disk drives, whatever was ANY "phase" voltage doing
connected to the case? I'd want the electrician's hide for that, even if
he did work for the Board.
When I worked at ICL in the 1990s, I remember us being kicked out of out office/lab area into temporary accommodation while the lab was gutted and re-fettled. When we were allowed back in, we discovered that consecutive benches of the E-shaped row of benches (a spine with lots of
side-branches) had been connected to a different mains phase (the benches were labelled with the standard phase colours) and there were big signs warning us not to connect equipment from one bench to equipment on another (eg by RS-232 or USB or Ethernet). This was a severe imposition and we had
to buy a lot of opto-isolators and/or juggle equipment between benches so things that *needed* to be connected together (maybe temporarily during testing, not necessarily permanently) could be connected.
I presume it was not normally a problem, but H&S had to cater (rightly)
for the "it will never happen" case of two pieces of equipment both
suffering live-chassis faults that didn't trip RCDs, and someone
connecting USB between those devices, which would have had 415 V (I think) between them.
Our head of department was not best pleased at the restriction, and was seriously considering getting site services to put all of the lab area on
one phase, and then sharing the desk area between the other two phases, on the grounds that connecting between lab and office was much less likely
than connecting between benches within the lab.
On Thu, 17 Aug 2023 14:56:16 +0100, steve1001908 wrote:
On Wed, 16 Aug 2023 14:31:52 +0100, Stephen WolstenholmeFile:ICL_EDS80_at_Vintage_Computer_Festival_(1).jpg
<stephenwolstenholme30@outlook.com> wrote:
While working on TV I got all the usual shocks. The worst one on B&W TV >>>was HT on a Rediffusion set. EHT was a much higher voltage but very low >>>current. I never got a EHT shock from the very early colour sets I
worked on with DER. I saw one of the other engineers get a shock from a >>>colour TV EHT supply. It floored him. I had a tube discharge
occasionally from new tubes (still boxed) arriving from the supplier. I >>>always held on to the tube but swore at Mullard. Years later I started >>>working on computer peripherals. I got a shock from an Ampex spooler >>>motor servo when it decided to spool in the magnetic tape. That was a >>>very bad shock and I had to have a lie down for a while. Everybody >>>laughed!
I've just remembered another "classic" shock from my mainframe computer
days. Some sites had rooms full of ICL EDS80 for data storage. Each
EDS80 was connected to three phase but only used one phases. Operators
would sometimes take a short cut through the gap between two EDS80 by
leaning on both drives. Just occasionally adjacent EDS were connected to
different phases. Thank the lord that the gray/orange cover paint was
quite thick. See
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
It wasn't me but one of the operators. She was very unhappy. It took me
a while to convince her that I didn't do any of the power wiring.
We got the local electricity board engineers for that.
I discovered the Mullard MW6-2 holds it's 25kv charge for quite a while.
Smolley <me@rest.uk> wrote:
On Thu, 17 Aug 2023 14:56:16 +0100, steve1001908 wrote:
On Wed, 16 Aug 2023 14:31:52 +0100, Stephen WolstenholmeFile:ICL_EDS80_at_Vintage_Computer_Festival_(1).jpg
<stephenwolstenholme30@outlook.com> wrote:
While working on TV I got all the usual shocks. The worst one on B&W TV
was HT on a Rediffusion set. EHT was a much higher voltage but very low
current. I never got a EHT shock from the very early colour sets I
worked on with DER. I saw one of the other engineers get a shock from a
colour TV EHT supply. It floored him. I had a tube discharge
occasionally from new tubes (still boxed) arriving from the supplier. I
always held on to the tube but swore at Mullard. Years later I started
working on computer peripherals. I got a shock from an Ampex spooler
motor servo when it decided to spool in the magnetic tape. That was a
very bad shock and I had to have a lie down for a while. Everybody
laughed!
I've just remembered another "classic" shock from my mainframe computer
days. Some sites had rooms full of ICL EDS80 for data storage. Each
EDS80 was connected to three phase but only used one phases. Operators
would sometimes take a short cut through the gap between two EDS80 by
leaning on both drives. Just occasionally adjacent EDS were connected
to
different phases. Thank the lord that the gray/orange cover paint was
quite thick. See
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
It wasn't me but one of the operators. She was very unhappy. It took me
a while to convince her that I didn't do any of the power wiring.
We got the local electricity board engineers for that.
I discovered the Mullard MW6-2 holds it's 25kv charge for quite a while.
Yes, when I worked at Eddystone Radio they were still telling the tale
of the nosey, rather unpopular, manager who wandered through the
Development Department during the lunch hour and picked up a MW6-2 that
had been recently used. Out of curiosity he poked his finger down the
EHT socket and finished up juggling the tube for several seconds. He
didn't realise he was being watched; everyone in the works knew about it within a few minutes.
--
~ Liz Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk
On 16/08/2023 15:52, tony sayer wrote:
As to EHT shocks yep a few colour Tubes were dropped owing the charge
rebuilding on CRTs made a bloody mess being b dropped on the works
floor!
Many says that RF burns are the worse and tend not to heal up.
I once disconnected a feeder with a few KW or RF on it (I had been
assured it was turned off). It was very impressive, I heard a 'clunk'
from the other end of the building as the amplifier tripped off but no
arcing or burning.
Of course the hazing that used to go on when a new person came to work at
the factory. Somebody charged up a high voltage electrolytic and left it on >the desk or the chair while the new person was in the loo. I'm sure you can >imagine the result.
Brian
With our old talking newspapers being distributed on ordinary cassettes, we used copiers that ran at 16 times speed. As they ran, some of them would flash over between the tape and the metal centre hub. You could get a rather large shock if you brushed against the spool hubs when it was operating. I gues it was in effect a small sized windshurst machine.
I had a similar problem when designing a playback machine for
Recordgraph film loops. They were 50ft long and wound into an endless
hank running around a circle of rollers, the film was pulled out from
the cente, played and returned to the outside. As the hank revolved,
the turns would shuffle over each other as they neared the centre and
each turn became slightly shorter.
I found I was getting loud clicks on the playback amplifier that were
nothing to do with the recording. In the dark, blue flashes were
visible between the layers of the hank and these coincided with the loud >clicks.
At a position where the film entered the hank I had installed a wiper*
to colect any dirt, this was charging the film. A pair of carbon fibre >brushes just after the wiper, one each side of the film, solved the
problem.
[* The first attempt at a wiper was a felt sleeve on a nylon bar, but
this was too coarse to penetrate the grooves, so a fine velvet sleeve
was used instead.. We made an official report on the design of the
machine in which the wiper systems was described as a 'want'; I don't
think anyone bothered to read it or they would have discovered that this
was because it was a 'long felt want' ]
In message <1qfo5fn.1th04711md72heN%liz@poppyrecords.invalid.invalid> at
Fri, 18 Aug 2023 17:37:19, Liz Tuddenham
<liz@poppyrecords.invalid.invalid> writes
[]
I had a similar problem when designing a playback machine for
Recordgraph film loops. They were 50ft long and wound into an endless
hank running around a circle of rollers, the film was pulled out from
the cente, played and returned to the outside. As the hank revolved,
the turns would shuffle over each other as they neared the centre and
each turn became slightly shorter.
What was Recordgraph - optical film?
Those things with grooves on film
that had some popularity in Germany (though I think they had a different name, something with band in it - ...
As to the ICL disk drives, whatever was ANY "phase" voltage doing
connected to the case? I'd want the electrician's hide for that, even if
he did work for the Board.
Brian Gaff <brian1gaff@gmail.com> wrote:
With our old talking newspapers being distributed on ordinary cassettes,
we
used copiers that ran at 16 times speed. As they ran, some of them would
flash over between the tape and the metal centre hub. You could get a
rather
large shock if you brushed against the spool hubs when it was operating.
I
gues it was in effect a small sized windshurst machine.
I had a similar problem when designing a playback machine for
Recordgraph film loops. They were 50ft long and wound into an endless
hank running around a circle of rollers, the film was pulled out from
the cente, played and returned to the outside. As the hank revolved,
the turns would shuffle over each other as they neared the centre and
each turn became slightly shorter.
I found I was getting loud clicks on the playback amplifier that were
nothing to do with the recording. In the dark, blue flashes were
visible between the layers of the hank and these coincided with the loud clicks.
At a position where the film entered the hank I had installed a wiper*
to colect any dirt, this was charging the film. A pair of carbon fibre brushes just after the wiper, one each side of the film, solved the
problem.
[* The first attempt at a wiper was a felt sleeve on a nylon bar, but
this was too coarse to penetrate the grooves, so a fine velvet sleeve
was used instead.. We made an official report on the design of the
machine in which the wiper systems was described as a 'want'; I don't
think anyone bothered to read it or they would have discovered that this
was because it was a 'long felt want' ]
--
~ Liz Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk
In message <1qfo5fn.1th04711md72heN%liz@poppyrecords.invalid.invalid> at
Fri, 18 Aug 2023 17:37:19, Liz Tuddenham
<liz@poppyrecords.invalid.invalid> writes
[]
I had a similar problem when designing a playback machine for
Recordgraph film loops. They were 50ft long and wound into an endless
hank running around a circle of rollers, the film was pulled out from
the cente, played and returned to the outside. As the hank revolved,
the turns would shuffle over each other as they neared the centre and
each turn became slightly shorter.
What was Recordgraph - optical film? Those things with grooves on film
that had some popularity in Germany (though I think they had a different name, something with band in it - since they were played by basically a record cartridge I don't think they'd be so susceptible to what follows)?
I just _love_ it when something like that gets into a report. We had something for testing digital comm.s called a bit error rate tester, alias BERT, which certainly found its way into the panel labels; there was the
I found I was getting loud clicks on the playback amplifier that were >>nothing to do with the recording. In the dark, blue flashes were
visible between the layers of the hank and these coincided with the loud >>clicks.
At a position where the film entered the hank I had installed a wiper*
to colect any dirt, this was charging the film. A pair of carbon fibre >>brushes just after the wiper, one each side of the film, solved the >>problem.
[* The first attempt at a wiper was a felt sleeve on a nylon bar, but
this was too coarse to penetrate the grooves, so a fine velvet sleeve
was used instead.. We made an official report on the design of the
machine in which the wiper systems was described as a 'want'; I don't
think anyone bothered to read it or they would have discovered that this >>was because it was a 'long felt want' ]
time when Grundig had lots of "-boy" radios (Yacht-boy, Call-boy) when someone in our department called his design call-girl, but that got
spotted. My favourite such thing was an article on the use of Doppler direction-finding aerials, which managed to get a reference to the Monty Python architect sketch tucked in among all the other academic references.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/<1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the God who endowed me with sense, reason, and intellect intends me to forego their use". - Gallileo Gallilei
"MB" <MB@nospam.net> wrote in message news:ubn699$5vdg$1@dont-email.me...
As to the ICL disk drives, whatever was ANY "phase" voltage doing
connected to the case? I'd want the electrician's hide for that, even if
he did work for the Board.
When I worked at ICL in the 1990s, I remember us being kicked out of out >office/lab area into temporary accommodation while the lab was gutted and >re-fettled. When we were allowed back in, we discovered that consecutive >benches of the E-shaped row of benches (a spine with lots of side-branches) >had been connected to a different mains phase (the benches were labelled
with the standard phase colours) and there were big signs warning us not to >connect equipment from one bench to equipment on another (eg by RS-232 or
USB or Ethernet). This was a severe imposition and we had to buy a lot of >opto-isolators and/or juggle equipment between benches so things that >*needed* to be connected together (maybe temporarily during testing, not >necessarily permanently) could be connected.
I presume it was not normally a problem, but H&S had to cater (rightly) for >the "it will never happen" case of two pieces of equipment both suffering >live-chassis faults that didn't trip RCDs, and someone connecting USB
between those devices, which would have had 415 V (I think) between them.
Our head of department was not best pleased at the restriction, and was >seriously considering getting site services to put all of the lab area on
one phase, and then sharing the desk area between the other two phases, on >the grounds that connecting between lab and office was much less likely than >connecting between benches within the lab.
The local Police some time ago had a pilot venture where a certain team had >mountain bikes to catch the people who made a run for it after a robbery. >They were going to call it Fast Action Response Team, which raised a titter >in the hall until it was pointed out to them what the acronym for it would >be.
The local Police some time ago had a pilot venture where a certain team
had mountain bikes to catch the people who made a run for it after a
robbery. They were going to call it Fast Action Response Team, which
raised a titter in the hall until it was pointed out to them what the
acronym for it would be.
Then if you recall there was a plan by the administrators of NASA, to
make a manned rocket out of those solid rocket boosters when they retired
the Shuttle. The bofins thought it was a very stupid idea, so much so,
they never did a bespoke pad for it, instead they walked the launch
vehicle sideways with the thrust. They, I think tongue in cheek called it Aares. Most of the main people did not agree it was viable you see, and
Ares is an anagram of Arse... Nuff said I think.
Brian
In article <ubq6dn$p5ft$1@dont-email.me>, Brian Gaff <brian1gaff@gmail.com> wrote:
The local Police some time ago had a pilot venture where a certain team
had mountain bikes to catch the people who made a run for it after a
robbery. They were going to call it Fast Action Response Team, which
raised a titter in the hall until it was pointed out to them what the
acronym for it would be.
Then if you recall there was a plan by the administrators of NASA, to
make a manned rocket out of those solid rocket boosters when they retired
the Shuttle. The bofins thought it was a very stupid idea, so much so,
they never did a bespoke pad for it, instead they walked the launch
vehicle sideways with the thrust. They, I think tongue in cheek called it
Aares. Most of the main people did not agree it was viable you see, and
Ares is an anagram of Arse... Nuff said I think.
Brian
and, there was nearly a City University of Newcastle upon Tyne.
I just _love_ it when something like that gets into a report. We had something for testing digital comm.s called a bit error rate tester,
alias BERT, which certainly found its way into the panel labels; there
was the time when Grundig had lots of "-boy" radios (Yacht-boy,
Call-boy) when someone in our department called his design call-girl,
but that got spotted. My favourite such thing was an article on the use
of Doppler direction-finding aerials, which managed to get a reference
to the Monty Python architect sketch tucked in among all the other
academic references.
On 19/08/2023 06:49, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
I just _love_ it when something like that gets into a report. We had
something for testing digital comm.s called a bit error rate tester,
alias BERT, which certainly found its way into the panel labels; there
was the time when Grundig had lots of "-boy" radios (Yacht-boy,
In message <pc6cnXyFXY0-k0P5nZ2dnZfqn_ednZ2d@brightview.co.uk> at Thu,
17 Aug 2023 13:12:17, NY <me@privacy.net> writes
[]
I presume live chassis sets had problems because the one connection to >>them, apart from the mains lead, was for the aerial. If the aerial
screen was as mains or half-mains voltage, I presume it could not be >>earthed and had to have an insulating cover over the normally metal
Belling Lee plug. I remember some aerial leads where the plug was flat >>rather than cylindrical, with a rubber/plastic cover over it.
I think they just had a capacitor coupling between the aerial socket
outer and the internal "ground". A fairly tiny capacitance would suffice
for UHF, but not carry enough current to be harmful (at least, in the
days when electric razor chargers were considered safe with just a
capacitive dropper!).
On 19/08/2023 06:49, J. P. Gilliver wrote:
I just _love_ it when something like that gets into a report. We had
something for testing digital comm.s called a bit error rate tester,
alias BERT, which certainly found its way into the panel labels; there
was the time when Grundig had lots of "-boy" radios (Yacht-boy,
Call-boy) when someone in our department called his design call-girl,
but that got spotted. My favourite such thing was an article on the use
of Doppler direction-finding aerials, which managed to get a reference
to the Monty Python architect sketch tucked in among all the other
academic references.
My Nan had a Grundig Yacht Boy, I think it was probably a present.
Quote a high end set if I remember rightly.
Could have been an unfortunate naming of a special for the hire market...
Happy memories of listening to Radio City across the water.
She was Billy Butler's top fan - far more of a radio listener than tv,
she only had a tiny little b&w tv, then a rented 14" colour (80s/died 1992)
James
On 17/08/2023 10:43, Brian Gaff wrote:
I presume live chassis sets had problems because the one connection to
them, apart from the mains lead, was for the aerial.
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