Please help me with (insert task here)

[Don Bruder]

When I was 8, I built a number of radios. Unfortunately, they were meant to
be audio amplifiers. We were very close to a powerful AM station.
[/QUOTE]

Hey! That sounds like my early days! 500 yards, give or take, from the
base of the local 50KW AM station's mast means #10 cans scavenged from
restaurants are your friends!

 

[martin griffith]

I've met a pretty exceptional one, of the female persuasion, through the
Audi Engineering Society EMC standards group. NASA and all that. Lots of
high-precision RF work, and a ham ticket. I don't know her call. Another
is an Australian, into very advanced digital audio.

But of course that's two among thousands. However, the number of female
members of the Society is increasing rapidly.

Maybe they are better at listening?


martin

 

[Steve at fivetrees]

Install a 1N34 across a light switch with the power off an d the
switch is on. Turn the power back on and wait for someone to shut it
off. Then there is a loud bang, but the light still works when they
turn it back on. I used to have 5000 spares. ;-)

My kinda guy .

Steve
http://www.fivetrees.com

 

[daestrom]

as the US military is all volunteer now i guess you could call it an
elective motive force.

Ba-Da-Boom!!!

Thank you, thank you, we're here all week, try the roast beef......

daestrom

 

[Mike Lamond]

Even worse is when they DON'T include the task in the subject. Eg.
"Need help, URGENT!!!"

Mark

I've had my own rant building on this for a while, just from the
posts in some EE and controls sites. There seems to be more
inexperienced engineers asking for help on projects that they've
been assigned to but aren't ready to handle on their own. How
much of this a management issue, where the newbies are thrown
to the wolves without any support or mentoring, and how much
is cultural, where they are afraid that asking for help will cause
them to 'lose face' by appearing unqualified? For what it's worth,
English is clearly not the first language for many of the posters.

I have 'been there, done that' when it comes to being in over my
head. My first major project at my first engineering job was a
subcontract for a mil-spec power distribution unit, essentially
two circuit breaker panels and some motor controls in one
cabinet. However, the company had no mil-spec experience
or quality control system, so we had to create everything from
scratch. 20 years later, I prefer dealing with bio-pharm cGMP.

Mike

 

[Ray Andraka]

When I was 8, I built a number of radios. Unfortunately, they were meant to
be audio amplifiers. We were very close to a powerful AM station.

When I was 8, I was mostly building lamp dimmers. Not the intended
function, mind you, but that's what they did

 

[Don Bruder]

When I was 8, I was mostly building lamp dimmers. Not the intended
function, mind you, but that's what they did

ROTFL! BTDT!

 

[Jim Thompson]

Found it. CBS News, dated 2002/11/17:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/11/17/60minutes/main529657.shtml

Yep. CBS/Wallace/Woodward... the kind of source that makes the
stomach turn.

...Jim Thompson

 

[Don Seglio]

Yep. CBS/Wallace/Woodward... the kind of source that makes the
stomach turn.

...Jim Thompson

Surprisingly he gave the context for that statement. But I'm sure it
will be used out of context.

--

Cecil
KD5NWA
www.qrpradio.com www.hpsdr.com

"Sacred Cows make the best Hamburger!" Don Seglio Batuna

 

[Sjouke Burry]

I used to install a roughly 68 ohm 1/2 watt carbon resistor across
the AC mains (110 volt) after the power switch. This was usually
done at lunch time, while someone else was preparing for his
initial smoke test on a new instrument (back in the days of
tubes). The result was a satisfactory grrr-bang and smoke. Modern
resistors don't work as well, they just fizzle.

Ahh... You forgot the most important ingredients!
A 5wats resistor somewhere dissipating 10 or 20
wats, and smeared with a liberal coat of grease.
Its important that said resistor should turn cherry
red in 2 or 3 seconds.......Oops, should not have
told this.

 

[Jim Stewart]

CBFalconer wrote:




Try 1/4 watt 1000 Ohm metal film resistors, they glow red, then make a
decent, "pop".

~100 uF ~10V radial aluminum electrolytics make great confetti
generators, when plugged into standard 120V power outlets.

An SCR, placed across the terminals of a decent
sized gelcell will give a very rewarding blue
flash followed by an orange fireball after it's
been turned on.

 

[Everett M. Greene]

We used to put those 0.5mm pencil fillings across the 220V terminals (the
screw type that also accepts banana plugs) at the test benches at school....
Especially the softer types (4-6B) produced a nice soft orange flash
followed by enormous amounts of smoke

Tantalum caps connected with reverse polarity will make
a good-sized bang when the encapsulation material
bounces off a hard object and/or will have a small
mushroom-shaped cloud rise from it.

If you happened to be looking at the moment when power
was applied to the old UV-erasable PROMs place in a
socket backward would put on an interesting show of
little pinpricks of light appearing at random spots
on the die.

 

[Jim Stewart]

Tantalum caps connected with reverse polarity will make
a good-sized bang when the encapsulation material
bounces off a hard object and/or will have a small
mushroom-shaped cloud rise from it.

If you happened to be looking at the moment when power
was applied to the old UV-erasable PROMs place in a
socket backward would put on an interesting show of
little pinpricks of light appearing at random spots
on the die.

I remember that. We called it the "You put the
chip in the socket backwards lamp".

BTW, the SCR trick works best with parts in a
TO-220 package.

 

[Homer J Simpson]

Hi can someone please explain to me how to post to usenet?

Use extra postage.

 

[Jim Stewart]

Hi can someone please explain to me how to post to usenet?

Um, you just did...

 

[John Woodgate]

Hi can someone please explain to me how to post to usenet?

No, it can't be done. Usenet is read-only as from 2210 GMT today.

 

[daestrom]

Use extra postage.

Tried that once. It got awful hard to read the screen between all the
stamps.

(that, and the white-out my wife keeps painting on the screen to correct her
typing mistakes

 

[Gene S. Berkowitz]

No, he used "Google Groups", which is spliced into usenet.

Mike, it's a JOKE... Start at the beginning of the thread, and you'll
get it...

--Gene

 

[/dev/phaeton]

Mike, it's a JOKE... Start at the beginning of the thread, and you'll
get it...

--Gene

Sorry guys, I was just fooling around. Note that I'm no longer at work,
and instead of using Google Groups, I'm at home using the Pan newsreader
to read/post via my ISP's nntp server directly.



-phaeton

 

[Bob Ferapples]

Ummmm it was a joke.

Why would you be trying to save time? You obviously have nothing
better to do and your post is a big waste of bandwidth.