Radio Shack

Discussion in 'Gadgets & Tech Talk' started by Ken Anderson, Aug 6, 2020.

  1. Faye Fox

    Faye Fox Veteran Member
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    I was never a big Radio Shack fan. I usually ordered from Allied Radio. Sometimes Layfette. There were others that advertised in QST. My best source for parts was swap meets and buying old military gear and stripping it. Top-quality screws in that old military radio as well as the Allen Bradley carbon resistors and Sqaugue capacitors. I bought a lot of NIB parts at swap meets and my final shortwave broadcast transmitter was built from NIB vintage parts. I built AM and CW only and in the 1950's style. Radio shack was mostly Japanese made parts and resistors claimed at 20% were more like 30%. Radio Shack really grew with the advent of circuit boards. I did some design prototypes for a company that contracted with Phillico Ford in the late '60s after graduating High School. They bought the circuit board design and etching kits from the Shack and all their transistors, diodes, resistors, and capacitors. I had to test every part. They never believed me that they could save money by ordering from Allied. The only Radio Shack equipment I ever had that I loved was their old handheld metal cased digital freq counter. It was accurate and easy to use. Nice for checking oscillators for freq drift.

    I built a lot of Heathkits, but my favorite was designing my own and homebrewing. The old Bill Orr Radio Handbooks I inherited from my dad were my Bible.
     
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  2. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    @Faye Fox

    You'll love this story:

    I went to community college at nights while working full time starting when I was 23 or so (1977). I was going to get my degree in Electronics (but later discovered that the full curriculum was not offered at night, so I switched to Accounting.)

    I was taking an Intro to Tubes and Transistors class, and we were doing a lab with a 600vdc circuit. We were using the Simpson Bakelite meters that had circuit breakers requiring a plastic reset key held by the instructor. There was one kid who was struggling, and every time the instructor made himself comfortable on his stool and picked up his book, you could hear the *CLICK* of the guy's meter tripping. So the instructor would sigh, get off his stool yet again, walk over to the kid yet again, and reset his meter yet again. You could tell he was getting tired of it (I don't know why he didn't offer help.)

    So we're quietly working on our lab when there's another *CLICK* and the instructor did not move. Maybe 30 seconds later the kid SCREAMED!!! and we heard something pinging off of the walls. We all laughed because we all knew what had happened. He decided to reset the breaker using a paper clip, and he didn't disconnect the meter from the circuit!
     
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    Last edited: Sep 5, 2020
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  3. Scott Laughlin

    Scott Laughlin Very Well-Known Member
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    There no better school than that of hard knock and clicks. I never knowing made smoke on an aircraft. One proceedure marrying the Doppler radar system to bombing navigation took nearly 18 hours. Lots of opportunities for mistakes.

    I like your story.
     
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  4. Scott Laughlin

    Scott Laughlin Very Well-Known Member
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    I doubt Radio Shack had much you could use. Allied Radio had much more to offer.
     
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  5. Faye Fox

    Faye Fox Veteran Member
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    Not a Radio Shack Kit. Designed and built by me back in the day when I got tired of designing and sewing outfits.
    613577ZpU0O9M5.jpg 614522sVhHgAoQ.jpg e5re3o9RQ9Mc.jpg
     
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  6. Scott Laughlin

    Scott Laughlin Very Well-Known Member
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    Faye, this is outstanding. Many folks don't realize what goes into such a project. I've not built anything of this magnitude. But I have held my breath when applying power.

    Sewing: we traveled in opposite directions. When my wife first started with Alzheimer's I put the radio stuff aside and helped her. She went from color books to fabric painting and then announced she wanted to embroider. I thought it was beyond her capability, but tooling up was affordable so we went for it. She astounded me. I learned to quilt by watching Youtube, bought a sewing machine, and we started quilting big time. We were a year getting 64 blocks joined with batting and the bottom.

    It now hangs in my living room, a bench mark for the 58 years we've shared. I'll attach a pic when I learn how to do get it done.
     
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  7. John Brunner

    John Brunner Senior Staff
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    Eric, we need a way to give more that just a single "Like" for your posts.

    We would all love to see a pic of that quilt, and can help walk you through every phase of the picture posting process.
     
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  8. Frank Sanoica

    Frank Sanoica Supreme Member
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    @Faye Fox

    Upper right, the power transformer might have been rated at perhaps 1200 volts, powering two power triodes either in a push-pull amp, or oscillator circuit......would power a Tesla Coil real well!
    Frank

    Below, image of one of my first Tesla Coils, powered by a single 811-A Power Triode, in my little basement lab (about age 14). The original transmitting type capacitors (mica, like these)[​IMG]

    kept shorting out. Contrived better capacitor seen with window glass dielectric, aluminum foil on either side. Produced lots of Ozone, stank up the place good.
    [​IMG]

    The cubical box on the shelf with a Variac on top of it is a 100,000 volt X-ray transformer out of one of these:
    [​IMG]
    Shoe-fitting fluoroscope, ca 1940.
     
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  9. Scott Laughlin

    Scott Laughlin Very Well-Known Member
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    Lots of ideas and projects. I recall he fluroscope in a shoe store. It must have been 1943. It's a wonder instill have my feet.
     
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  10. Scott Laughlin

    Scott Laughlin Very Well-Known Member
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    Thanks John. I'll work on getting those pic together. I'm old and not as smart as I once was. !y apartment is very small. I used the quilt-as-I-went method because I was working on a card table.
     
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  11. Ken Anderson

    Ken Anderson Senior Staff
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    Radio Shack.
     
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  12. Faye Fox

    Faye Fox Veteran Member
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    I used to help my mom quilt. She made over 300 quilts in her life many hand-stitched.
    Just a few in my collection. She was an amazing seamstress.
    6211844pDOZiT8y.jpg
     
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  13. Faye Fox

    Faye Fox Veteran Member
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    @Frank Sanoica That is some tesla coil setup. I never messed with tesla coils. My transmitter power supply was 2150 vdc under a 500 ma load. It was an old transformer from an old BC 610 I got from a swap meet. The rectifiers were the gas 3B28's. I never like the mercury vapor 866 rectifiers. I still have my old variac. I used it after I got rid of all the electronic stuff to heat an element in an aluminum pipe for bending wood. The tube in the RF deck is an 813 tetrode and two 813's wired as triodes in push-pull class B for the modulator.

    Those old transmitting micas like in your photo were great for meter bypass, but most were rated 1200 VDC or lower and not useful. I had some of the old military 5KV one's NIB but they were so large to use for bypass on the HV lines, I went with the ceramic tubular at 10KV. They are the red ones in the photo.

    I guess we best get back on the Radio Shack (the store) topic. Our personal radio shacks of the past are not interesting to most.

    Did anyone ever buy those lifetime tubes with the gold plated pins at Radio Shack? I never had good luck with them. Their 6L6's didn't put out as much power and wouldn't last in guitar amps.
     
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    Last edited: Sep 6, 2020
  14. Scott Laughlin

    Scott Laughlin Very Well-Known Member
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    A great deal of time work. That number of quilts is amazing.
     
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  15. Frank Sanoica

    Frank Sanoica Supreme Member
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    @Eric Brown

    Great numbers of these fluoroscope shoe-fitting machines were sold during the 30s and 40s to shoe outlets. Fact was, they WERE dangerous, as exposure times were not limited, just arbitrary up to salesman, who probably over time got the brunt of hurt. They were outlawed in about 1955 or so. Most were mfd. by Adrian X-Ray Co., in Wisconsin.

    Frank
     
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