[ARC5] Merry Christmas

[Bill Cromwell]

On 12/27/2013 03:51 PM, Leslie Smith wrote:
>    Mike, you raise a serious point about safety vs knowledge.  You write
>    about repairing a "death trap" and surviving.
>    
>   I did the stupidest things you can imagine when I was a kid.  (as sure
>   as hell I frightened myself doing them.)
>    e.g. I built a super-regen 2 meter receiver, but rather than winding a
>    separate coil for the aerial (and thereby isolating the B+ from the
>    aerial) I "tapped"
>    the aerial directly onto the coil.  (The impedance match from
>    "tapping" is as good as a separate winding, is it not?)
>    So I had B+ on the aerial.  Clever, he?  The supply was came from a
>    325-0-325 transformer "rescued" from an old B.C. set.
>    I had built a death trap.  One day  I grabbed the chassis AND the
>    aerial.
>    I ended up on the other side of the room - literally.
>    When I stopped shaking (it took some time) I understood how stupid I
>    had been.
>    But I don't regret doing that - because I learned to distrust myself
>    and think more clearly about what I was doing.
>
>    I think we have all had one experience like mine, and there is value
>    from being "durned stoopid".
>
>
>    73 de Les Smith
>    vk2bcu at operamail.com
>
>
Hi Les,

Most of us from "the olde dayes" were the lucky ones. Some of our peers 
checked out way back then. I have most recently been working on a DX-100 
and of course there is work (tests and measurements) that has to be done 
with power applied while it's on the bench "belly-up". I think of those 
who passed before so we could learn the lessons of how to avoid the same 
fate with careful, step-by-step procedures. I showed a lime green 
tinhorn "the dance steps" and explained the whys here the past few days. 
That young man is not likely to ever work on such a thing but it was 
interesting for him anyway while I was doing "show n tell". When we 
finally made RF power and lit up the light bulb dummy load he decided it 
had been a very interesting show.

Hats off and a moment of silence for our departed friend Ross Hull.

73,

Bill  KU8H