On Sunday 23 March 2025 08:58:28 am wn4isx via groups.io wrote:
Too bad this isn't 1960 and the Ed Sullivan show was on Sunday nights because the presenter is a much better comedian then engineer. His escapades would go over quite well with dancing bears and guys who spin plates on poles.
I remember spinning plates, not any bear. Could never see the point of them. 1960 was quite the year, but I'd rather not go back there...
However, he'd be tossed out of, and banned, from any university electronics laboratory for his foolishness.
Suggesting using a resistor divider to reduce direct AC mains to feed a microcontroller is downright stupid verging on criminal.
Lots of stupid stuff out there on the 'net. YT doesn't seem to care.
The way you measure ultra high DC voltages is with a electrostatic voltmeter.
In my real early days of messing with TVs the accepted practice was to arc the HV to the chassis, and see if you got a decent spark. Later on this was frowned upon. Somewhere back there I bought a Polaris branded HV probe, a big long thing with a pointy bit on one end, a wire with a clip on the other to ground it, and a meter. You also had a couple of terminals on either side of the meter which you could use to measure the cathode current of your horizontal output tube. I haven't used it a lot, but I've used it some. Still works well, even though the plastic packaging that wrapped around the box has yellowed and started to self-destruct.
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I've seen this in Honda CB350s, 1968 and 1969 stock VW bugs. The ignition coils in the Honda twins was located where they were heated by the engine, I never had a hard failure but I could tell when it was time to replace one when the power dropped way off and the engine sounded funny, both ignition coils never failed at the same time so the power was really imbalanced between the cylinders. I limped home from Mason Ohio [near Kings Island] to Lexington one night sweating "Will I make it home...."
VW coils just failed for the fun of it. West German manufacture wasn't quite as perfect as they'd have liked for you to believe.
We had a VW bug of around that vintage. It had a blown head gasket, another blown gasket at the base of a different cylinder, and the battery had a shorted cell and wouldn't start it, so we had to push start the thing. Good thing we were up on a hill... We stopped driving that thing when it wouldn't pass inspection any more because it was basically rusting out. My brother was a bit of a VW nut and owned several of them including that little bitty pickup truck, but these days he's driving a Chevy. I guess he's disappointed in "german engineering" or something?
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VW transporter van with Porsche engine
My brother worked at a dealership at one point, and the parts for those two brands are exactly the same. With different prices.
I did have the ignition coil fail on a Plymath Omni, about a month before the engine decided to emulate a grenade. [Way too exciting at 80MPH on the Mountain Parkway at 3:00AM. You've never lived until you have parts of the engine come through the hood right before your windshield is covered in oil and coolant. Loads of unfun.]
You have had more excitement than I have, for the most part. Though I did have a couple of episodes of a wheel departing the vehicle...
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--
Member of the toughest, meanest, deadliest, most unrelenting -- and
ablest -- form of life in this section of space, ?a critter that can
be killed but can't be tamed. ?--Robert A. Heinlein, "The Puppet Masters"
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Information is more dangerous than cannon to a society ruled by lies. --James
M Dakin
