"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 2 Feb 2008 08:06:23 -0500, "Eisboch" wrote:


"Short Wave Sportfishing" wrote in message
. ..

On Fri, 1 Feb 2008 21:12:37 -0500, "Eisboch" wrote:


I wondered. Back in my day, the guy who owned the TV shop where I
first learned advanced electronics where I worked used to tweak the
blue for that same reason.


You just reminded me of an old timer I knew in CT. I was about 15 years
old, interested in electronics, and kept busy building speakers and
amplifiers out of old, dead radio or TV carcasses. The old timer ran a
small, old fashioned TV repair shop in Bethany and kept me stocked with
old
chassis and components, much to my parent's chagrin. Saved him from
having
to take them to the dump, he said.

One day I decided to build a couple of crossover networks, so I visited
his
shop to get some tips. He stopped what he was working on, rummaged around
behind his desk and pulled out a book on electronics and circuit designs.
He made me sit there learning the formulas and doing the calculations for
low pass, high pass and blocking circuits until I could tell him the value
of the inductors, capacitors and resistors required to build the crossover
networks with various frequency response curves. When he was satisfied
that
I understood the design theory, he then went to his parts bin and gave me
the appropriate components. Pretty decent guy.

Dang - almost exactly what happened to me.

I had my Novice license and as it happened, I knew enough to get into
trouble. While building a simple CW transmitter, I ran into a problem
and my Dad wasn't around to help, so I took it down to the TV shop. I
knew he was a ham because he had a tri-bander on a tower behind his
shop.

I walked in with it and asked if he could help me troubleshoot it. He
asked a couple of questions, then did the exact same thing - pulled
out the books and made me do my own trouble shooting with minor
instructions from him.

That was the start of a long relationship with the TV repair shop. By
the time I graduated high school, I had learned a lot from him and had
enough time and knowledge to pass the Master Technician test for the
state of MA. Not to mention advancing in the radio hobby.

Not a lot of mentoring like that around today.

Nope. Now we have DVDs like "Digital Video Essentials". Building stuff at
the component level has gone the way of horse drawn carriages, for most
people.

Oh .... you'll get a kick out of this. Last night some of the family were
over and we were teasing Mrs.E. about her obsession with her horses. I used
your line about horses being at the end of their evolutionary cycle and were
basically worthless. She was quick with her response, telling me to go
track the price of a barrel of oil over the past couple of years and I'd be
wise to learn how to ride.

Eisboch