"David Holgate" wrote
Martin, thanks for the flurry of interesting posts that your original
confession has produced.

I have had a Bush VHF 61 (early VHF plus MW/LW) beside my bed for a year
now. Cost me a tenner and a little very basic fixing, and sounded great
for a year till something died within it. Now the clock radio sits on
top! Yes, hifi it ain't but I was amazed by the mellow beauty of its
tone on FM.

However, your post prods me to do something about getting it working
again. It's all hard-wired within, and I was told that many of the
(working) components should also be replaced. Off to
http://www.bvws.org.uk/ at the weekend.

David

Ha, yes, I always enjoy reading stories of people's near brushes with
electrical death!

I myself used to enjoy big caps as a teenager; I fondly remember
making it rain white-hot molten aluminium onto my bedroom carpet
many times, as I used to short out a big bank of caps with a piece
of aluminium. The little globules used to fall onto the carpet and
fade through orange to red, then black again, as small wisps of
carpet smoke issued up from each cooling drop!

And the big fat orange furry 40kV sparks that reeked of ozone, which
came from an old oil-filled 'scope xformer, which had its 4v or
6.3v filament windings collected to 10 or 15VAC, while we made good
use of what came of the 3.2kV (IIRC) H.T. winding.... Now that WOULD
have killed us (me and my best friend from school, electropyromaniacs
both) if we'd done anything wrong - with extreme prejudice!

But I did get some sensible things done. At 15 I managed a 4-digit
frequency counter with 1, 1000, 1000000 ranges, build entirely from
discrete 4000-series CMOS chips, which came to something like 22
I.C.s on an IMPRESSIVELY small piece of Veroboard.

I made a half-decent push-pull valve audio power amp that I got
about 15W RMS out of, which wasn't bad considering I wasn't using
a proper output xformer, but rather a mains xformer pressed into
service. That valve experimentation got me my share of minor jolts.

A single-scope to 8-channel multiplexer from a 4051 CMOS analogue
switch I.C. and a counter (though in truth, it wasn't that useful
when made).

Stuff like that. All good teenage kicks. I could go on. All good fun, apart
from the shocks.

Keep 'em coming (the stories)!


Martin
--
M.A.Poyser Tel.: 07967 110890
Manchester, U.K. http://www.fleetie.demon.co.uk