Quiz on capacitors

ICit2lol said:

Hmm sounds a bit like the stuff my nephew and I got up to like soldering on a wire to the high tension on the cathode ray tube connections and then touching around inside of the set (an old one of course LOL!!) with the wire end and watch the light show

When I was in High School, I used to stop by a TV repair shop on the long way home and find old TV chassis I would take home to strip down for parts. Since the CRT made the chassis too heavy and bulky to carry on my bicycle, I would remove it before loading it. I learned the "fun" fun way to discharge the flyback lead before pulling it off the CRT. I still landed on my backside more than once (that's probably why it's so large now ).

That spark coil did make quite a bang when it blew its top off. It was loud enough to wake the dead and scare them to death. I still can't believe Mama didn't hear it and come investigate (unlike Daddy, she would have killed me dead).

Sounds very much like we re a bunch of mini terrorists when we were young - our poor parents LOL!!

I agree what got me in was watching the tubes light up in my granddads battery driven wireless (radio) and going on to discover one needed that heating power supply for the cathode

My old shack had an aerial that consisted of 150 metres of plain wire for TV reception slung between the shack and a tall tree - on old sets and although the reception was not terrific (black and white) was such a thrill to get things working when the TV had been given up on and thrown away.

Now my "apprenticeship" included quite a few shocks of one sort or another AC & DC LOL!! but all worth it in the end because look where we are now!!

poorguy said:

hey all, everyone should experience shock that's way you learn to respect it. and besides we were just a tougher generation then people are today. I remember building a crystal set and winding a coil and using a safety pin and razor blade to tune in stations, had to run wire around to a tree in the backyard and a ground wire to a cold water pipe then we listened through a head set or earphone. we used our brains unlike kids today. it was fun stuff that todays youth will never know about. poorguy

I did the same thing as a kid. Then I got fancy and laid my hands on a variable capacitor to tune the thing. The next step was putting together a Heathkit shortwave radio kit I got for my 8th grade graduation. My parents thought it would keep me busy and out of trouble for the entire summer; I had it up and running in a week.

Yep bane of my life were dry joints so hard to track down at times especially on the PCB's the older ones I started on were the old steel chassis with wires draped everywhere between components and only found when there were sparks LOL!!''

Yep Jeannie I wonder why you missed the air caps in the quiz cos that was what you were using .
The tiny ones we called trimmers - I used to be fascinated by how one could "trim" with those things:)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_capacitor

Now we are dating ourselves mate remember the wiring and how the colours were always faded and testing them with a meter (if you had one) for polarity and stuff?? Mind you all I had was an analogue one that was way too sensitive and the readout so tiny in increments
Plus I remember spending many hours trying to get rid of the AC hum in stereos - never had a Heathkit and I can't remember the brand we used in the UK back then but in any case it was terribly expensive back then and took a lot of saving to get the darn things.
My whipping boy was designing frequency circuits for audio use to love doing that and still have my old notes and schematics!!