Radios — Part Five

A chance meeting with the radio maintenance man at McPherson Power and Light lead to a new dimension in amateur radio for me. I don’t remember how the visit came about, but while I was there I learned that he was a radio amateur. I had never met one before or even thought about how to find one. I didn’t know what I was missing.

He-whose-name-I-can’t-remember invited me to come over to his house to see his rig, and talk about radio. He had a nice station — upscale receiver, high-power transmitter, good auxiliary equipment — much like the one in the picture. He also had a mobile amateur rig in his car. I spent many evenings there, messing about with ham radio. He also took me over to meet another ham who had an even more powerful transmitter down in his basement “ham shack” (man cave).

I told my new friend about losing the radio repair job, and he told me about a possible opportunity at the Crabb Brothers store. They sold farm equipment but had set up a TV sales department. They hired Carl Holloway to do their service. Carl had just returned from TV service school and was relying on my friend to help him get started.

My friend had several TVs to work on with Carl so we went over that night. My friend had set one aside because he had been unable to find the problem. While he and Carl worked on the other TVs, I tackled that peculiar one.

It didn’t take me long to figure out the general nature of the problem, but it wasn’t obvious where it was located. I asked Carl if he had a vacuum-tube (highly sensitive) voltmeter. He had one. He built it during his TV school work (it was very nice too). Carl had it in its case under the workbench. I couldn’t believe he wasn’t using it, but it was just what I needed to pin down the problem.

After I fixed that TV and a couple others my friend told Carl he should hire me. Carl had been the friendly butcher at the Safeway store. Now he was trying to enter the emerging TV business. But he sorely lacked practical experience. Carl agreed to give me a try.

Carl and I made a great team. I came in afternoons, and Carl went out installing TV antennas. That work was bringing in more money for him than TV repairs did. He also fixed TVs in the mornings but left the puzzling ones for me.

When Carl came back from installing antennas I explained the TV problems and how I fixed them. I understood TVs because my previous radio experience helped me fully absorb the self-taught TV course that Leon Matson had loaned me. I was surprised myself by how well prepared I was.

The repair shop was tucked into a former display window at the Crabb Brothers store. We were certainly on display, but we had our own door. Customers always asked for Carl when they came in. They knew and liked him from his Safeway days. I don’t know where they thought he was hiding.

One day a woman came in and demanded to see Carl. She wanted to get the dial on her table-top radio fixed (we fixed those too). She reluctantly left it with me since Carl wasn’t there. When I went to fix it I could not see any way the dial string could have ever been routed in the first place. I bent some metal out of the way and installed a new one doing it my way. It worked just fine.

The woman came in the next day and picked it up. I charged her $3 and put the jury-rigged fix out of my mind. A couple of days later she came back, mad as a stepped-on rattlesnake. She told me I hadn’t fixed it at all, and demanded to know what I was going to do about it. I told her I was sorry for her grief (not in those words) and promised I’d talk it over with Carl. When he got back I explained the customer’s complaint and told him I couldn’t see any way the replacement string could have broken.

Carl looked at it for a while and then asked if I had ever seen a string break in three pieces. I realized the impossibility of that and told him no. After pondering some more he said, “I know what happened. She has a screen porch full of birds. There is birdseed scattered all over the place. So she has mice too. One of them must have wanted some string for a nest.”

I replaced the dial string again, and he took the radio to her house (no charge). He also explained that she needed to do something about her mice. We never saw her again.

The flyback sweep circuit is perhaps the quirkiest part of those old picture tube TVs. The parts in them were highly stressed and often failed. You need to understand magnetic fields, high voltages (15,000 volts), a novel voltage boost circuit, etc., to sort out the problems they had.

I understood those flyback sweep circuits because Leon’s course described them clearly. And I had the right background to absorb how they worked. The flyback sweep circuit was invented by the very same Barny Oliver that I mentioned in a later post.

That was my senior year. I was far enough ahead on credits that I only needed to take 12 instead of the usual 15 – 16-hour course load. That gave me plenty of time to enjoy myself even though I had that half-time job. I was still active in amateur radio too. I even had some time for social life. I was going into the Army after graduation, so I also joined the National Guard to get a leg up on military service. That particular gambit paid off nicely in the long run.

I wanted to get into Radar school after basic training. Radar was one of the pinnacles of electronics technology in those days. It was mega-radio. I didn’t make it though. The Army made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I could tell you what I did do in the Army, but then I’d have to kill you. 😉 I can tell you that Army service interrupted my electronics quest. I’ll be back later with more electronics stories.