Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Cerebus]

One positive point in mutilating the Nazi markings on WWII German planes is that it offers the possibility of a teaching moment when taking small boys around aircraft museums. "Father, why is that marking only half there?", "Well son, in the Second World War there were some bad Germans...". Perhaps we should do the same to RAF roundels and USAF markings on museum planes to encourage everybody to tell the whole truth. "Well son, the RAF did some good and very brave things in the second World War, however they also did some bad things...".

Makes the whole war sound like a friendly football match with a few rough moments.

One is imagining explaining things to a small boy, some soft peddling is to be expected - a fully fledged rant on how horrible it was for whole families to burn to their deaths in Dresden because Air Marshal Arthur "Bomber" Harris was an unconscionable bastard who was no better than Hermann "Fatty" Göring is probably not the best way to handle it.

[Neper]

Not quite TE but is related ish, this guy brought a electric super car from China over the internet.....

Reminds me of the old joke about the rich American who hears that they build a car called named Trabant in East Germany for which you'll have to wait for over ten years if you order one. So, he thinks this must be something really special, writes a cheque about 100,000 dollars and mails it to East Berlin. The comrades in the GDR are mighty impressed, take a Trabant from the running production, put it in a large crate and send it to the U.S.

Once it arrives there, our rich friend calls all his friends to come and have a look at what he's got. "Imagine they've accepted my cheque and, look here, while they're making my car, they've sent me this cute little plastic model and, would you believe it, it even has a small engine so I can drive it around my garden."

[tggzzz]

Texan farmer boasts to a Vermont farmer that he could drive his car all day and he still wouldn't get to his farm's boundary.

Vermont farmer observes he has a car like that too.

[Saskia]

@Robert before you trash a usable APU or gas turbine let me know. I would have to look at my remaining cash, but  ...

In other news I just blew my bonus for a pinball ...

[AVGresponding]

Discord is a fact, and may even be apposite

[Robert763]

@Robert before you trash a usable APU or gas turbine let me know. I would have to look at my remaining cash, but  ...

In other news I just blew my bonus for a pinball ...

Oh I'm not trashing anything useful..... I'll keep you in mnd if I do dispose of the APU or come across another one. I've travelled to Germany and Belgium to pick up engines previously.

[0culus]

Snagged this from the bay of evil a long time ago. It arrived very poorly packed bouncing around in its carton with a cracked handle (fortunately not completely broken free, but it still pissed me off), missing the fuse holder cap and mains fuse.  I was so aggravated it went straight to the repair queue.

The approach of this page prompted me to dig it out and poke at it a bit.  Borrowed a fuse cap from something else and still had no indication of life when brought up on a variac. Troubleshot a bit and found the power switch was not closing (getting it out requires removal of the side casting; it's in a little aluminum box and rather snugly nestled in place).  Fortunately some Deoxit dribbled into the gap between the plunger and housing followed by some exercise got the switch unstuck and working again, and things look pretty good after a cursory check with a few small caps I had kicking around.







It still needs a good going over and a serious bath, but I’m glad I was finally motivated to look at it!

More pics to come when it gets a proper examination.

-Pat

<edit - typos. I hate posting from an iPad!>

Dammit, Pat. Now I'm looking for one. 

[TheDefpom]

I have picked up a few bits of gear recently (I'm still waiting for them to arrive)...

HP 3561A
HP 350D
Keithley 225
Quest Electronics 211A-FS and CA-12

Now I need to stop spending money as I have to buy a new heat pump for my lab so I can record video this summer without a racket in the background from my old salvaged unit.

[tautech]

I have picked up a few bits of gear recently (I'm still waiting for them to arrive)...

HP 3561A
HP 350D
Keithley 225
Quest Electronics 211A-FS and CA-12

Now I need to stop spending money as I have to buy a new heat pump for my lab so I can record video this summer without a racket in the background from my old salvaged unit.

LOL Scott, yeah one of those was on a live stream where we watched your finger twitch for a good while before hitting Buy Now. 
Welcome to the TEA hut house !

[mnementh]

So we are no longer Canucks in waiting; we are now US citizens only again. Even though the immigration lawyers told us we had all our LMIA stuff in order (and evidently we did), we didn't do the visitor status renewal thing correctly, and being stuck in the middle of a global pandemic was not good enough reason. We went to do the last part of the process as outlined by our lawyers; returning to the US and finalizing the LMIA at the border. However the visitor status problem borked that, and we spent 18 hours "not being detained" in the border station waiting area and our car before they told us officially to piss off back to the US.

We are at this moment regrouping just across the border in New York (no med, we're not coming to your idyllic little corner of the state), and going to visit my dad in NYC.

So short version: we're starting over. We may try the LMIA thing again depending on the results of the hearing, but by the time we get back on our feet and can think about such things, we'll probably be established somewhere close to my dad which is now my primary concern.

It was a nice, if very expensive, vacation.

mnem
*so very tired*

[vk6zgo]

Texan farmer boasts to a Vermont farmer that he could drive his car all day and he still wouldn't get to his farm's boundary.

Vermont farmer observes he has a car like that too.

I heard the same story, where an Aussie was the boaster, & the rejoinder was from a Texan.
The difference is, there are properties like that in Oz.

[vk6zgo]

So we are no longer Canucks in waiting; we are now US citizens only again. Even though the immigration lawyers told us we had all our LMIA stuff in order (and evidently we did), we didn't do the visitor status renewal thing correctly, and being stuck in the middle of a global pandemic was not good enough reason. We went to do the last part of the process as outlined by our lawyers; returning to the US and finalizing the LMIA at the border. However the visitor status problem borked that, and we spent 18 hours "not being detained" in the border station waiting area and our car before they told us officially to piss off back to the US.

We are at this moment regrouping just across the border in New York (no med, we're not coming to your idyllic little corner of the state), and going to visit my dad in NYC.

So short version: we're starting over. We may try the LMIA thing again depending on the results of the hearing, but by the time we get back on our feet and can think about such things, we'll probably be established somewhere close to my dad which is now my primary concern.

It was a nice, if very expensive, vacation.

mnem
*so very tired*

Oh bugger!

[vk6zgo]

Currently on my bench is the HP 334A, taking place of the TDS784C that just got a recap too as they are known for leaky caps when they get older, and mine is an earlier serial number.
 The 334A is getting a full re-cap as some of the Vishay 30D's are giving a good effort at blowing their rubber seals out, and also the noisy and drifty carbon comp resistors are being replaced for metal film.

My janky mod for installing a square peg radial caps in a round hole in place of axial caps seems to be turning out pretty ok so far... 

Great idea!
I'd do the same, but clear heat shrink seems to be unobtainium in Oz.

[vk6zgo]

It's a wrap. Complete. It's got over 48 hours of defect free burn-in.

At some point I will install the rectifier upgrade so generously sent to me by TERRA Operative. When I feel like torturing myself with the disassembly/assembly. 

When I worked at a TV Studio, I had occasion to replace the (2") Trinitron picture  tube in a tiny Sony picture monitor, which normally lived in the instrument panel of the station helicopter.
It was nightmarish to dismantle & reassemble, & unfortunately travelled around in a "flying vibration bench", so it had to be  done about four times before I finally tamed it. AAARRRRGGGGHHHH!

After that, I would have welcomed a Tek 212 for relaxation!

[Saskia]

So we are no longer Canucks in waiting; we are now US citizens only again. Even though the immigration lawyers told us we had all our LMIA stuff in order (and evidently we did), we didn't do the visitor status renewal thing correctly, and being stuck in the middle of a global pandemic was not good enough reason. We went to do the last part of the process as outlined by our lawyers; returning to the US and finalizing the LMIA at the border. However the visitor status problem borked that, and we spent 18 hours "not being detained" in the border station waiting area and our car before they told us officially to piss off back to the US.

We are at this moment regrouping just across the border in New York (no med, we're not coming to your idyllic little corner of the state), and going to visit my dad in NYC.

So short version: we're starting over. We may try the LMIA thing again depending on the results of the hearing, but by the time we get back on our feet and can think about such things, we'll probably be established somewhere close to my dad which is now my primary concern.

It was a nice, if very expensive, vacation.

mnem
*so very tired*

Uh oh.
Good luck

[vk6zgo]

The ones in the UK sported the "bare concrete" look, some complete with the rough surfaces of the wooden planks which had surrounded the formwork.

That effect was often deliberately produced by sandblasting the boards used for the shuttering that was used to mould the concrete. This showed up any grain in the wood, but also relieved the edges of the wood slightly leaving visible 'seams' in the concrete. You can see that precise effect on the lecture centre at Brunel - the building directly behind Fulton McKay and Malcolm McDowell above and shown in closer detail here:



You can see all the vertical lines where the side-by-side shuttering boards butted up to each other and occasionally horizontal lines where two boards in line abutted. E.g. A broken horizontal line about 8-10 feet off the ground on the foreground pillar (to the left of the central walking man in the picture) where alternate boards ended at the same length.

Brunel is actually one of the better examples of the style. It was very carefully done and the original building work is first rate. It still looks as miserable as a wet Wednesday. The typical British Brutalist build was, by comparison, "thrown up" and makes Brunel look sunny by comparison.

It doesn't look that bad from a distance, but walking past horrors like that, seeing them an arms length away is "sick making".
They could at least paint the bastard things----English days are grey enough without adding more on purpose!

[vk6zgo]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I'm sick of the production line featureless Mies van der Rohe glass boxes: they are so unimaginative and boring, especially close up.

The Oz glass boxes of the '60s/early '70s were a bit less bland than the ones Mies van der Rohe designed .
At the time, they were all fairly different, & distributed amongst older buildings, rather than enormous, overwhelming groups of basically the same building.

The woodgrain concrete buildings have two virtues over that: the shape can be interesting and they have an interesting texture when walking by them. In the right place, e.g. the South Bank arts complex, they can be quite pleasant to visit.

They might have been improved a bit, but, back then, I found walking past raw, unfinished concrete to be depressing.

Would I want to live in one? No. But then there are many other buildings I wouldn't choose to live in, e.g. the serried ranks of identical rabbit hutches seen in "overflow" towns.

Why do British town planners have this obsession with "mass produced" housing?
The ones in the pix are probably a bit more practical than the old "Coronation Street" type terraces, but they aren't much less sad to look at.

Unfortunately in Oz, smaller building blocks with mass produced houses are being pushed to reduce "urban sprawl".
Though not as horrific as the Brit ones, they are still pretty dire.
They are detached----you can fit your arm between them! AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!


[/quote]

[med6753]

So we are no longer Canucks in waiting; we are now US citizens only again. Even though the immigration lawyers told us we had all our LMIA stuff in order (and evidently we did), we didn't do the visitor status renewal thing correctly, and being stuck in the middle of a global pandemic was not good enough reason. We went to do the last part of the process as outlined by our lawyers; returning to the US and finalizing the LMIA at the border. However the visitor status problem borked that, and we spent 18 hours "not being detained" in the border station waiting area and our car before they told us officially to piss off back to the US.

We are at this moment regrouping just across the border in New York (no med, we're not coming to your idyllic little corner of the state), and going to visit my dad in NYC.

So short version: we're starting over. We may try the LMIA thing again depending on the results of the hearing, but by the time we get back on our feet and can think about such things, we'll probably be established somewhere close to my dad which is now my primary concern.

It was a nice, if very expensive, vacation.

mnem
*so very tired*

I wish no ill will on anyone but I'm going to be brutally honest. I've made some very dumb decisions in my adult years and some of them still haunt me to this day. When I moved here 11 years ago I was recently divorced and nearly broke. All due to some very dumb decisions. So I'm not speaking from an ivory tower when I state that your move to Canada was a dumb decision. And as you have stated several times it was predicated on seeking a better life for your family which I'm not buying even if you were giving it away for free. Canadians are a friendly and polite bunch. They would never say to your face "Yankee go home", although perhaps at the border today they did essentially say that. It's very apparent they aren't go to give you residency and are going to continue to throw bureaucratic roadblocks until you give up and go back across the border. I think you need to accept that. Your first concern right now is your family and getting them settled. I really do hope it works out for you on a positive note.         

[TERRA Operative]

Well, I said it before and I'll say it again...

I see TM500, I buy TM500...... 

[VK5RC]

So we are no longer Canucks in waiting; we are now US citizens only again. Even though the immigration lawyers told us we had all our LMIA stuff in order (and evidently we did), we didn't do the visitor status renewal thing correctly, and being stuck in the middle of a global pandemic was not good enough reason. We went to do the last part of the process as outlined by our lawyers; returning to the US and finalizing the LMIA at the border. However the visitor status problem borked that, and we spent 18 hours "not being detained" in the border station waiting area and our car before they told us officially to piss off back to the US.

We are at this moment regrouping just across the border in New York (no med, we're not coming to your idyllic little corner of the state), and going to visit my dad in NYC.

So short version: we're starting over. We may try the LMIA thing again depending on the results of the hearing, but by the time we get back on our feet and can think about such things, we'll probably be established somewhere close to my dad which is now my primary concern.

It was a nice, if very expensive, vacation.

mnem
*so very tired*

Oh FFS!

Imigration departments are insane!
They remind me of the movie 'Brazil'

Thinking of you and the dragon clan.
Rob

[Zoli]

Snagged this from the bay of evil a long time ago...

I'm glad to see that Pat shares my fondness for the most useful lab tool of all - blue tape.

Ha - that tape has probably been there for a good ten years now - that’s an old (like 60s era) Formica table (think it was my parent's first kitchen table) that I started using years ago to hold my computer keyboard and monitor.  The adhesive holding the edge banding in place was giving up the ghost, so I temporarily taped it in place so as not to catch and tear it completely off.  That was in about 2011 or 12.  Gotta love ‘temporary' fixes!

-Pat

Typically, a "temporary" fix,  if it works, it will last forever - don't ask me how I know.

[TERRA Operative]

"There's nothing more permanent than a temporary fix that works."   

[tggzzz]

Why do British town planners have this obsession with "mass produced" housing?
The ones in the pix are probably a bit more practical than the old "Coronation Street" type terraces, but they aren't much less sad to look at.

Unfortunately in Oz, smaller building blocks with mass produced houses are being pushed to reduce "urban sprawl".
Though not as horrific as the Brit ones, they are still pretty dire.
They are detached----you can fit your arm between them! AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH!

It isn't just British planners, such "ticky-tacky" houses are everywhere. There was even a song about it, "Little Boxes" sung by Pete Seeger https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/3458764513820548125/

It isn't so much the town planners as the developers that build on greenfield sites. The town planners were (and to a lesser extent are) under pressure to approve building lots of houses. Nowadays  there is more variation along a road/in a site, but the properties are taller and the gardens are only just big enough to swing a cat. (It is unlikely that someone would have a lawn mower to cut the grass: where would they put it, and scissors would be sufficient)

[Andrew_Debbie]

Dana 5100 update:     Burner power supply LTSpice output.     This is with AO's model for the FET and reasonable ESR for the capacitor.

[Specmaster]

So we are no longer Canucks in waiting; we are now US citizens only again. Even though the immigration lawyers told us we had all our LMIA stuff in order (and evidently we did), we didn't do the visitor status renewal thing correctly, and being stuck in the middle of a global pandemic was not good enough reason. We went to do the last part of the process as outlined by our lawyers; returning to the US and finalizing the LMIA at the border. However the visitor status problem borked that, and we spent 18 hours "not being detained" in the border station waiting area and our car before they told us officially to piss off back to the US.

We are at this moment regrouping just across the border in New York (no med, we're not coming to your idyllic little corner of the state), and going to visit my dad in NYC.

So short version: we're starting over. We may try the LMIA thing again depending on the results of the hearing, but by the time we get back on our feet and can think about such things, we'll probably be established somewhere close to my dad which is now my primary concern.

It was a nice, if very expensive, vacation.

mnem
*so very tired*

Man that sucks so much, especially after all the aggravation of having to keep moving to get a roof over your heads, but if there is a silver lining after all of this, it has to be that you no longer have to put up with the orange chump.