ECN Forum Forums Photo Discussion Forums Electrical Nostalgia My Apologies-1977 Thread

This thread is Off-Topic

Sorry guys,
I was taking out a couple of my rantings the other night and I should have done it with a bit more sleep under my belt.
Anyway I ended up deleting the whole thing.
But to start a new one, what were you doing on the 1st of March 1977?.

Go ahead guys, at my expense:




[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 03-15-2006).]

March 1st, 1977

I was still pushing a service truck around Washington, D.C. Lotsa GSA (General Services Administration - a Federal gummint entity for you folks across the pond), private commercial, restaurant type work etc. BORING!!!

'Course, I WAS the only 7 year old service truck driver in the District.

I could still do two things I can't seem to do now....... 1) See my feet without bending over and 2) Comb my hair. I can't seem to remember if I miss either of those now!!

I was in college at Syracuse NY. I lived in an old house that was fraternity owned, but I was not a "brother". March 1st we might have been at a basketball game. We had more snow than you can shake a stick at that winter - oh yeah - winter ends in April in Syracuse. I was a Landscape Architect student and I graduated in '78.

[This message has been edited by PCBelarge (edited 03-02-2006).]

"A" school, Great Lakes Naval Training Center, North Chicago, IL. What a pit that place was.

Sorry Guys,
What started this all off was my whinings about in 1977, I was going to a movie with my mother and my Auntie and happened to come across a guy that had come off his motorbike.
I'll never forget that day, the Bee Gees singing "Stayin' Alive", How ironic.
The guy died at the scene, but that made me want to be a Fireman.
Since I took up Fire-fighting I've attended 997 calls and while that's nothing to be proud of I suppose, I suppose I have helped the odd person.
But, 1977 was a good year wasn't it?!.
I was 7 years old.
How on earth did things get so out of order since??.
Mind you we had the 80's, which didn't help.

George,
Is there a Mafia link in there?.
You never have told us who you really are.

Uhhh....I was two years old?

'77? Transferred to a new unit. One of the clerical officers, let's call her Mrs E., took exception to an Englishman daring to work in "Welsh-Wales" and just loved to reject, ( with an oily grin ), every expenses claim, housing claim, hotel claim, travel claim, fuel chitty etc. that I made, with nitpicky errors, "wrong color biro", " need 4 copies", " no photocopies allowed", Wrong form, (you want a MO156A) ", "The wrong co-signee", "Too late for this month", "Not entitled to that." etc. etc.
I called her 'Heart of Glass' from Blondie's hit of around that time.
Then, we got a new English Director.
She promptly failed one of his expense forms for a taxi when his limo broke down on the way back from London one wet night, on the basis there was a bus service available! The next day she was transferred to a remote building at the back of site as a clerk in a cardboard-packaging recycling shed! LOL!

Was singing this for weeks after!

"Once had a love and it was a gas,
Soon turned out to be a PITA,
Seemed like a good thing, only to find,
Mucho mistrust, loves gone behind!"

Alan

'77: Senior year of high school. I was doing electrical work after school and on weekends. No clue on what I might've been doing that day though. I can tell you for sure that I did 2 solo skydives from 9500'AGL on March 8,87 but only because I have logbook entries for them. If I wrote down my activities in 77, it would've been on either a Star Trek, M.C. Escher or Tolkien Calendar.
Joe

March 1977 - Enjoying my 8th month of living on Oahu's North Shore. Surfing every day. Still here. I have had me a good life. Thank you God.

Spring 1977.

I was at Dag Hammarskjöld college in Assen, The Netherlands, not the brightest student, I was lazy and couldn't be bothered with homework and the like and my interest was more into the kWh meters.

I had worked out that you connect them up to 220 Volts and make them spin.
By removing the brake magnet they ran even faster so I connected about 40 or so meters up in my bedroom and various timeclocks, relays which clicked in and out every 15 minutes to reset MDI meters and the first red and green LED's as indicators.
The meters measured my lights and stereo and my dad paid the powerbill so that was even better for a 16 year old, living at home with a collection out of control.
I remember very well the Ammeter swinging on the stereo amp, especially on the base tones of the music like a VU meter.
I like the electro mechanics of the meters especially the Landis & Gyr meters with the differentials and the miniature meccano like gear wheels.

I spent all my pocket money on buying a weekly railpass in school holidays for the dutch railways ( Nederlandse Spoorwegen ) and travelling as many kilometres as possible in that time period to cover all the lines in the country.

Also visiting powerboards and collecting boxes full with old meters and taking them back on the train. Never paid anything extra and explained to the guard that my mate and I had a hobby out of control.
Like having 200 kg of meters, like 8 big cardboard boxes and no extra freight charge, great he, that was possible in those days.

I also had the odd girlfriend although relationships didn't last too long because of my excessive interest in meters and trains.

We lived in a rural village in Loon and in my spare time I helped out the neighbours who were farmers with milking cows, driving the tractors in the hay season, mowing acres of grass with the John Deere with cyclo mower, and Massey Ferguson with hay shaker and Ford dexta with the grass spreader.
Then potato season and the like and a great time afterwards with lots of Grolsh beer.
It were great days, never to be forgotten.
These memories will last forever.

Thanks Mike for raising this thread.

Regards Raymond

edited for typo's

[This message has been edited by RODALCO (edited 03-04-2006).]

i was working at Kaiser Steel's hot strip mill as a third class electrician, nothing like re-brushing 5000 hp dc motors.

I turned 11 in March 1977 and was in my last few months of junior school (started high school in September). And as mentioned before, I was spending a lot of time playing around with radios, bits of wire, and all manner of stuff bought from the local electronics surplus store, at the church jumble sales across the street, and donated by neighbors clearing out sheds and attics!

I don’t remember what was I doing that Tuesday, but I’m sure I should have some bitter feeling about school (5th grade, elementary) starting in two weeks. Yes, down there school years start on March.

But I do know that if I could travel back in time I will try to convince myself to be an accountant!

Regards,

Joe.-

Paul,
Do you remember the Ladybird book of how to Build Your Own Transistor Radio?.
Back when you could get bits for radios.
I have a question for the ECN family here, is there still a company that makes Air-spaced Variable Capacitors and Trimmer capacitors as well?.
I ordered 3 212pf Double Gang Capacitors in the late 1970's from E.F Johnson Co and never recieved them.
I saved up from my after school job NZ$49 (1979) got a money order (that in itself cost $12) and never heard a bean since.
I was under the impression the Postal service here had taken my money.
The tuning cap is the most hard to get part of a radio these days.
Doesn't anyone make this sort of thing anymore??.

I don't recall that one specifically, but I had several radio/technical books from the series. I remember having Ladybird books on the Discovery of Radio, Telephones, etc.

Somewhere in the very early 1970s there were also little "Project" books published here by -- of all people -- The Milk Marketing Board. They were aimed at kids and covered a whole range of topics, not just electronics. I still have some of those somewhere: Exploring a Railway System, Build A Record Collection, Signaling (Morse code, semaphore, flag signals etc.) and one from that series "How to Build Your Own Transistor Radio."

In fact at least two or three of my very first radio projects came out of that book! (They used mostly the OC-series transistors as I recall, which were very common at that time.)


Jackson Bros. still make them here, but be warned they are not cheap anymore!
http://www.mainlinegroup.co.uk/jacksonbrothers/

1977, can't remember exactly but I'd likely have been learning the basics (at just under 4 years old!) of electrical wiring, 4 1/2 volt batteries, lamps (I learned early they aren't called 'bulbs'), switches and wire. I remember you could buy little round switches like mini versions of the round tumbler light switches.

Trumpy, yes, I had that very book, and tried to build the radio. I had no problems building the crystal set that if I recall correctly began the radio project, but then had to add an OC71 transistor. The local radio shop chap had some, so I bought one, and broke off one of the legs in my enthusiasm to fit it. I can still feel the frustration now. But that radio DID work, so long as you poked the wire into the broken off stub of the leg

And did you discover that by scraping off the black outer coating, the OC71 could actually be used as a crude photo-transistor?

I think the switches you're referring to might be the same ones that I used for many projects around that time. They were round and silver, not much more than an inch or so in diameter. Although looking like a miniature tumbler switch, the contact action inside was just the operating dolly pressing down on a copper strip.

I also recall that the outer shell was also connected to one side of the switch, a fact which I think I only realized after dropping something across two switches which were on opposite poles of the battery!

I do remember that I ended up using loads of those little switches on my model railway layout.

Paul. During WWII, HM War Office had a top secret development cell at Porlock, Somerset UK. Neville Shute worked there as a Development Engineer, amongst other madmen. They came up with some of the strangest secret weapons ever seen on this planet and one of these was the 'Harvey Rocket' which was a standard 3" signal rocket plus a crude warhead and a contact fuse. Launched up a bit of scrap steel U channel, it was fired by just 2 of those minature switches, [ one of them was the safety switch! ] a radio battery + electric fusee. I think the idea was to build an anti-aircraft missile for less than 50 pence! Presented to a plainly hostile and disinterested audience of Top Brass at Portland, UK, 'Harvey' did not disappoint their dismal expectations. Test firings veered wildly in all directions and it was plainly utterly useless. A General spoke up saying it looked unsteady and inaccurate.
Shute bristled, and replied that of course, what did they expect! - they needed something to aim at! Ordered by the General to 'aim at' a bunch of tethered inflatables guarding the fleet across the harbor, Shute took careful aim, and pressed his little F. W. Woolworth's 6 penny switches.
Whoooooooosssshhhh!!!!!!!
'Harvey' scorched over the water....... and scored a direct-hit on one of the Blimp tethering cables! A very expensive Inflatable soared up into the statosphere, its crew baling out as fast as possible!

'Harvey' was never seen again!

Alan

ps. Found this: http://www.nevilshute.org
Memory plays tricks over the decades - it was called the 'Harvey Projector'- [ah! now that sounds a bit more technological!]
This and other tales of Shute Norway's wartime designs could be found in Gerald Pawle's book 'The Secret War' which is now, I think, sadly out of print.
Alan




[This message has been edited by Alan Belson (edited 03-15-2006).]

Paul,
Yes,
I did actually try that in a little light-sesnsitive switch project once.
Oddly enough, when I built my first crystal set, my Dad said instead of using the easy option of a detector diode (then an OA91 germanium diode) he suggested I use a small of coke (No, not the drug or the drink) to fashion a crude cats-whisker detector.
I have heard of razor blades being used as well, how that works I'm not sure.
Chipmunk,
The first "bulbs and batteries" book I ever had used thumb-tacks and paper-clips as switches.
I built a crude oscillator and taught myself Morse Code with the very same sort of switch.
Using a key is a breeze after using a device like that.

Flick forward 10 years,
To 1987, what were you doing then?.
I was nearing the end of Secondary School, but at that stage I was well into building electronics projects.
I was getting into computers with the release of the BBC2 computer and us guys at school were working on projects to use with the "Beeb".
School Certificate exams the year after and I elected to do 6 subjects in that (5 subjects was the norm).
I came out OK, with good passes in Maths,English, Economic Studies, Metal-work,Wood-work and Science (I had one of the highest pass marks in NZ for Science- 99% ).
Your story?.

{good thing we never used a keyboard in the English exam!}


[This message has been edited by Trumpy (edited 03-24-2006).]

Late 1987 my brother and I were preparing for our emigration to New Zealand in February 1988.
I still did refrigiration and lighting in a big warehouse at that time and some domestic wiring jobs locally, nothing to be to exited about, hence the big shift "down under" which I really enjoy.
The hardest part was packing all my electrical gear and the decisions what to keep and what to part off.
The local technical college in Assen was overwhelmed with my donations.

March 1977,
Sorry, can't remember much about it, but I think I was having the best time of my life. I was somewhat dazed and confused, but I remember that I hated disco.

I was 9 years old. Probably watching "Space 1999" and spider man.

Trumpy,
Ya gotta quit these walks down memory lane, it's killing me!!

1987 - I had been in business for 5 years, it was the beginning of the recession around here, but I still had about 25 - 30 guys working for me, we were doing a lot of commercial and mall type work. It would be another 3 years before the recession would get to me at all and 5 before I said there must be a better way (people were taking jobs at my cost or below for 2-3 years).

Friends of mine were already having extreme problems, mostly from injudicious use of credit, but none the less it was the beginning. Times had been good for awhile in 87, so fond memories of the year.

Course, being 7 in the 1977 answer, that would have made me 17 in the 87 answer....that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

I'd been teaching for the Virginia Apprenticeship Council for 3 years, good thing they didn't mind the teacher being so young!!

Nope, good memories of 1987, but lotsa hard times and changes ahead in retrospect.

Lemme see, I was 17 in 87, so by 91 I would have been old enough to legally drink....AND SHOULD HAVE!

For me...

March, 1977, I was 13 and in 7th Grade.
If not in School, or creating some Prankster-Related mischief
then look for me either tweeking the HO Scale Model Railroad layout, or out in the field working with my Father doing Electrical work, earning $$$ to dump into the previously mentioned Model Railroad layout (henseforth to be known as "The Currency Black Hole" - as $$$ went in, but never seen again!).

I think this was right around the time we "discovered" Railroad Torpedoes - and just how much fun they could be (read "extremely loud ways to annoy people").
Seems like the time frame, because in April 1977, we bought a Case of Thunderbomb Firecrackers - which is 12 Bricks of the standard 1-3/8" sized - 16 per pack, 80 packs per brick toys.
We had a huge supply of Torpedoes when the Case O' Firecrackers arrived.

As for March 1987, I was either Working in the field or playing in a Band (or playing my drums anywhere possible!)

My 1976 Firebird decided that it was a good
time for a new Rear End/Differential, in February of 1987, and let me know of this via a "Subtile Request".

It's subtile request came in the form of a broken spider gear on the drivers' side - with the corresponding "Wandering Wheel and Axle" which soon followed (loss of the spider gear allowed the axle to easilly roll out of the rear end assembly)

I remember seeing the wheel take off running towards the middle of the street, then a sudden loss of altitude on the rear drivers' side - and the resulting Road-Meets-Vehicle Frame/Body which soon followed!

Totally thrashed the corner panel, and scared the !@&*%$ out of me!!!

As for March, 1997, I was either designing / engineering some bank branch, or doing field work on a bank branch.

Scott35

edited for spelling of "Currency"

[This message has been edited by Scott35 (edited 04-13-2006).]

Hey Scott!
A 76 Firebird eh!
Man you made me think back a bit, my pops had a ' 76 Jeep Cherokee "S", complete with the " 360", holley 4-bbl ( I think) and the " Quadra Trac" 4-wheel drive system... They don't build them like they used to eh!
Its a shame though, that thing was a TANK, but it finally got what body panels that did not rust off of it, taken off and used basically as a utility vehicle on some mushroom farm around here, back around 1990...

A.D

Hola Rewired,

My Firebird had a 400 In³ Small Block Chevy (largest CID for small block chevy), with a 4 BBL Intake Manifold + Holly Carb sitting on top.
Standard Delco H.E.I. (High Energy Ignition), and a slightly tweeked Cam (not high lift + long duration).

After blowing out the original "254" Rear End, it got replaced with a nice solid "310" Rear End (310 or 312 I think??? been a long time...). Not so much high end area as the original 254's "Highway Gearing", but much better low end! Was a total dog off the line with the 254 gearing.

My Ex-Wife (somehow... ...) ended up with the Car, and soon after She took posession it was sold.

Ahhh, those were the days.

Scott35

Whoa!!! No one said we were going down VEHICLE memory lane!!

Rewired: When I was in business, I went to a GSA auction (gummint for those across the pond) and bought a 1980 Jeep J-20. 360, 4 bubble, no quadra trak here though, lemme see, get out, turn the hubs, get back in, yank hard on the lever to get in 4 high or low. Nearly the most unstoppable vehicle I've ever owned, still got pics around here somewhere.

After I shut the business down, I took to driving that evil road wagon, and I gotta say I loved it. Sold it in '02 when I took possession of my brothers 97 Dodge/Cummins but it's still running and doing well.

Ahhh the memories.....and damaged kidneys!

Hey George!
Gotta do what has to be done..
Yep the memory lane of automobiles...
Before my time, my parents had a late 60's Ford Fairlane 500 ( exact year I don't know as of this time...)
I do know it had a 390 under the hood, a " select shift" and posi-trac..... My mother apparently used to leave 20' strips of burnt rubber everywhere... My grandfather somehow totaled the car I don't know how..
I can still remember when I was a kid , growing up on this very same small dead end street, the smallest car was a Ford Pinto... Everyone had big Ford LTD station wagons ( with the fake wood veneer on the side), Plymouth valiants ( complete with either the "leaning tower of power inline 6" or the trusty 318) , heck there was even an Oldsmobile " Delta 88 Royale" and a Ford Monarch to name a few....

Ahh well enough of my rambling.. Time for me to go to the gas station with my " Cowboy Cadilac" and a wad of money..

1977 - soiling my diapers
1987 - girls

March 1987: We were in our third month of HSN ownership. 8 hour shifts of watching cheap garbage sold over 2MW of MTS Stereo. What a waste! There had been the normal talk about them not planning to get rid of anyone but we were down to 18 from around 50. I would routinely have our Master Control Operators go to slide because the cable folks in Fl. weren't sending me a legal signal. There's only so much that a frame synchronizer can fix. Broadcasting just wasn't fun anymore. I left in June.
I did 6 solo skydives in March 87. It looks like I was just getting the cobwebs out, style sets, tracking, barrel rolls, then trying to land in the peas.
This was in the Cleveland, Oh. area.
Joe

Fair-do's to us Oldslowbiles- what happened to 1947, '57 and '67?!
1947 was the year we had really bad blizzards in the UK. Pa took me to the British Legion Club [ex-armed services], to get some ale in for Christmas and had to carry me home part of the way on his shoulders, as I'd sunk up to my armpits.
Cripes, is that nearly 60 years ago already?

'57 Old School Yard. Who was that idiot?
'67 Magic year - Got a plum job as a draftsman and met Denise on a number 62 bus. She gave me her last cigarette. Wow!
Been married 36 years this month!

Alan

1977.. Queens silver jubilee. I was in the local brass band that played when she came to visit Stirling (14 years old)
1987.. Getting divorced from first wife

Trumpy:
How about 2007, or...1997
This thread was a walk down memory lane

87: 2 years old. In November I got a toy hoover which I found utterly unrealistic because it was battery operated. I eventually got my dad to fabricate an external wooden box that held the two D cells and a bit of flex to the hoover. Unfortunately I later cannibalised the hoover and now it's missing just about everything. A few years ago I found another similar one (different colours and labelled Siemens) but this one doesn't work either - the filter cover is missing, as are the accessories. Originally this thing came with a small box of styrofoam balls for playing cleanup.

March 1997: greatly looking forward to my second ski trip with school in late March/early April. I vividly remember that it was nearly 20C the last day of skiing and there was more mud and water than snow. One girl wearing white overalls fell into one of the mud pits

March 2007: started my first job on the 10th I think. Electrical planning at a largish office 25 km from Vienna with a 1-hour commute each way (by train, by car the way home would probably have been twice that or more). I left that bunch of binge-drinking workaholics (one of them regularly worked Mon-Fri 6-6, Sat-Sun 8-6, often more than that) 15 months later and went back to university. My two recurring tasks were moving switches, sockets and lights around in CAD plans and filling endless Excel spreadsheets with circuit numbers. That got old pretty quickly and due to bad eating habits I gained nearly 15 kg in that time. Mind you, I was borderline underweight before but I definitely knew I didn't want that trend to continue.

I'll do backwards....
2017: May slow down a little....Will wait 'till then to decide. Enjoying life & work.

2007: Doing the same; got an AARP advertisement in mail,threw it in the recycle bin without opening. Enjoying life & work.

1997: EC business going good. Enjoying life & work.

March 1977 I was driving my 1976 CJ jeep and going to work for my boss as an apprentice. I left the alarm company and started being an electrician.

March 1977: Finishing my Boy Scout project.

March 1987: Exited the US Navy after 6 years.

March 1997: Working at first job as an Electrical Engineer.

March 2007: Doing Controls work.

67 in Cuba fixing 3 056 verifiers for IBM (support call) and considering being shanghied on the sun tender Orion in Cuba if I wanted to go to Spain. I also did some work for the branch office In Jamaica enroute.

77 midnight coordinator and 2d level support for 5 states.

87 managing 14 guys in Ft Myers, hardware support and starting to get into the "designing/building computer room" business.

97 retired from IBM, working as state electrical inspector for 5 counties.

07 doing a little consulting but mostly retired.

Now really retired.

Retiredbut still working, huh Greg??
Nice pipe canopy!!

That is playing, nobody pays me now.