Anyways..What Are You Up Too

[AlanBeckett]

That was my P78 young Joe and you snaffled it from under my nose

My garage has gone from unhibabitable due to the cold to unhibabitable due to the heat. Still, the garden's enjoying it and I've got a few things done outside. Some areas look positively civilised. I'll put a picture on when I've got the washing in.

Alan

[Joe]

You pointed that wireless out to me! It was only a few minutes away from home and dirt cheap to boot. Given that I'm trying to get rid of stuff you may yet end-up with it.

Performance-wise it's about on a par with a DAC90a but cooler-running and with worth-while dial lights. It maybe doesn't sound quite as nice but it has a smaller speaker.

- Joe

[AlanBeckett]

I shall expect a good deal

Alan

[pwdrive]

I shall expect a good deal

Alan

Don't forget your 100% discount...

Lawrence.

[pwdrive]

Outside jobs - whilst the weather lets me: buildings, garden, etc. Kinda along the lines of 'making hay whilst the sun shines' - or in this case, read: timber, wood, paint, screws, things that shoot out of the ground, (there's not the slightest tinge of green to my fingers) and stone work, etc. And in that last category, before anyone asks, the unfinished rendering job is on hold: rendering a wall with mortar in this heat is asking for trouble.

But alas! I can hear the sad, lonesome wailings from a neglected soldering iron: I sure I can find a moment or two . . . . therapy and all that . . . However, it's so damn hot in the shack that that wailing might be coming from an overheated soldering iron . . even though it isn't plugged in!

And on that subject of overheating, I need a beer . . .

Al.

Al, I wonder if the Q of the tuned circuits in our comms receivers goes up/down or remains indifferent in this hot weather.....?

Lawrence.

[AlanBeckett]

My B40 still gets Radio Stoke on 1503 with very little retuning required pretty well regardless of Temperature.
Still, I expect that's what it was designed to do.

Alan

[Mark Hennessy]

I've been a bit pre-occupied with a ex-broadcast sound desk that I've been restoring. It's only 20 years old, but needed all electrolytics replacing. I had to source some obsolete analogue switch ICs from eBay. Also, it had a series of bizarre logic faults that were caused by 4000-series CMOS chips failing. Of course, they weren't fitted in sockets! And to make it worse, they were fitted to double-sided PCBs that didn't have plated-through holes, so getting the old chips out without ripping the component-side tracks off the board was "fun", to say the least. In order to solder these top-side pads to the IC sockets, other components had to be removed, which added to the time taken. And best of all, there are no schematics or any kind of information about this - I've had to reverse-engineer working schematics. I've definitely earned my fee with this one!

As I'm waiting for parts for the desk, I have a Hacker Sovereign 2 RP25B on the bench now. Sadly not one of mine, as it's a nice one... No FM. Normally, FM faults fill me with dread - mostly because accessing the rear of the FM front end PCB involves a lot of dismantling. They're not too bad in most Hackers, happily. It didn't take long to prove that the fault was with the front end, and that there was no oscillator. Then it burst into life. Bugger! From DC measurements taken during this, I was able to prove that the oscillator transistor had no collector current when in fault mode. Checking all components that could cause this, I was rewarded with a dry joint that was invisible to the naked eye. I spent a while touching up a lot of the soldering, and checking things very carefully before the long re-assemble, and so-far, so good. All is back together now, and I just need to do an RF lineup. The audio amplifier has bad noise, but this isn't the usual fault with these, so not the Lockfit for a change. It's white noise rather than the usual 1/f noise, and a distant memory tells me that this might be the AC128 VAS/driver T4. We'll see...

As for this glorious weather, I'm fair-skinned, so not very good in the sun. I did spend most of yesterday afternoon in the park with the kids, but decided to give it a miss this afternoon. My "temporary" workshop is in the cellar, where the temperature is nice and cool - it's 20C at the moment. But, at this time of the year, humidity has been the problem - it's typically a very uncomfortable 90% RH or so. That's because the outside air is brought in via the ventilation, and as it's cooled, the RH shoots up. It's actually quite dry down here during the winter, perhaps surprisingly... Anyway, I recently bought a dehumidifier, and it's proving to be really effective. The RH is now in the mid-60s, and it feels very comfortable now. Of course, the waste heat goes towards heating the space as well, so it's a very economical unit to run (about 170 watts when running, which it does less than 30% of the time at the moment as it's on a humidistat). I've reduced the amount of ventilation to stop it trying to dehumidify the world, though when it gets cooler outside I'll open that up again. And of course, the dehumidifier can be used in the house during the winter if needed.

All the best,

Mark

[pwdrive]

My B40 still gets Radio Stoke on 1503 with very little retuning required pretty well regardless of Temperature.
Still, I expect that's what it was designed to do.

Alan

Bloody good receivers them, you say B40 so no Osc Trim control on the front panel etc etc ?

Occasionaly mine trips the RCD, I'm guessing it's the mains filter caps (hopefully..!)

Lawrence.

[pwdrive]

I've been a bit pre-occupied with a ex-broadcast sound desk that I've been restoring. It's only 20 years old, but needed all electrolytics replacing. I had to source some obsolete analogue switch ICs from eBay. Also, it had a series of bizarre logic faults that were caused by 4000-series CMOS chips failing. Of course, they weren't fitted in sockets! And to make it worse, they were fitted to double-sided PCBs that didn't have plated-through holes, so getting the old chips out without ripping the component-side tracks off the board was "fun", to say the least. In order to solder these top-side pads to the IC sockets, other components had to be removed, which added to the time taken. And best of all, there are no schematics or any kind of information about this - I've had to reverse-engineer working schematics. I've definitely earned my fee with this one!

As I'm waiting for parts for the desk, I have a Hacker Sovereign 2 RP25B on the bench now. Sadly not one of mine, as it's a nice one... No FM. Normally, FM faults fill me with dread - mostly because accessing the rear of the FM front end PCB involves a lot of dismantling. They're not too bad in most Hackers, happily. It didn't take long to prove that the fault was with the front end, and that there was no oscillator. Then it burst into life. Bugger! From DC measurements taken during this, I was able to prove that the oscillator transistor had no collector current when in fault mode. Checking all components that could cause this, I was rewarded with a dry joint that was invisible to the naked eye. I spent a while touching up a lot of the soldering, and checking things very carefully before the long re-assemble, and so-far, so good. All is back together now, and I just need to do an RF lineup. The audio amplifier has bad noise, but this isn't the usual fault with these, so not the Lockfit for a change. It's white noise rather than the usual 1/f noise, and a distant memory tells me that this might be the AC128 VAS/driver T4. We'll see...

As for this glorious weather, I'm fair-skinned, so not very good in the sun. I did spend most of yesterday afternoon in the park with the kids, but decided to give it a miss this afternoon. My "temporary" workshop is in the cellar, where the temperature is nice and cool - it's 20C at the moment. But, at this time of the year, humidity has been the problem - it's typically a very uncomfortable 90% RH or so. That's because the outside air is brought in via the ventilation, and as it's cooled, the RH shoots up. It's actually quite dry down here during the winter, perhaps surprisingly... Anyway, I recently bought a dehumidifier, and it's proving to be really effective. The RH is now in the mid-60s, and it feels very comfortable now. Of course, the waste heat goes towards heating the space as well, so it's a very economical unit to run (about 170 watts when running, which it does less than 30% of the time at the moment as it's on a humidistat). I've reduced the amount of ventilation to stop it trying to dehumidify the world, though when it gets cooler outside I'll open that up again. And of course, the dehumidifier can be used in the house during the winter if needed.

All the best,

Mark

Good luck with the sound desk Mark, sounds a hands full job, double sided print can be a pain the old Sony Language Lab cassettes had double sided print with the most horrendous hard to find dry joints and lot's off them.

Lawrence.

[Yorkie]

Fancy, two of the forum's leading lights engaged in a bidding war for a radio on e-bay.

How unseemly!

You cleaned up nicely in the auction Joe, and in your hands, the set cleaned up nicely too!

I'm trying to take a leaf out of Joe's book and break the habit of a lifetime, which has resulted in me getting too attached to sets that I restore. Hence, I'm on a mission to downsize my collection of sets and to do as Joe does - enjoy the restoration, then move the set on to make room for another. It's a fine line to tread because too much of that and it almost becomes a business and as we know, there's little to be made from that, given the hours we put in. Also making money - other than to finance the next project - isn't what the hobby is about.

We've been out today with our walking club on the East Yorks Wolds, followed by an excellent Sunday lunch at a country Inn. Glorious day, up hills and down dales in unspoilt little visited countryside to work up an appetite. Didn't see a soul - the only company was skylarks, and a couple of buzzards circling above.

Two more days of freedom, then a week of purgatory in Essex with my wife's sister and deaf-as-a-post sports-obsessed couch potato, channel surfing, Daily Mail reading hubby, so it's a week of sport on TV with my Bose noise cancelling headphones on to blank it all out. (Memo to self: Remember to take your I-pod charger). And he says "he doesn't hold with internet - people have lost the art of conversation since all this www malarkey took hold". Errm, hello?

At least now that I'm no longer a serving magistrate I don't get subjected to him recounting tales from the Daily Mail, haranguing me the minute I set foot over the threshold. It used to go something like this: "In the Daily Mail there's a case of a little old lady, just collected her pension from the Post Office, knocked down by two teenage thugs who stole her pension and broke her hip. What did the magistrates do? Give 'em a slap on the wrist and send 'em on safari, that's what! I know what I'd do - I'd have 'em in uniform and send 'em on Safari to Afghanistan - that's what. Of course, teenagers who behave themselves don't get treats like being sent on safari - oh dear me no -you've got to be a mugger in a hoodie".

We'll overlook the fact that any case such as that described would be sent to the Crown Court as magistrates sentencing powers are far too inadequate to deal with anything as serious as that.

So in answer to the question 'anyway, what are you up to?' the answer in my case is 'not a lot'.

Tomorrow, I might just get a back made in my router jig for a little 'Regentone DW2' which is sans back, and which I'll hopefully be moving on in my cull of woodies.

There are upsides to a trip to Essex is that when I get home, it seems so much nicer

Rambled and ranted Yorkie.