Simple useful appliance?

Americans of all political varieties have a tendency to bug out over trivia a lot, it's probably partly a consequence of affluence, the kind of affluence where good hard working white people would never dream of stooping to stealing copper wire.

o the wall outlet. When the power is restored the Li-Ion battery will explo de and start a small fire which will then trigger the smoke alarm. The cont inuous alarm is more likely to be effective"

Are you related to Rube Goldberg ?

What about "good hard working" non-whites or non-affluent whites? See, that's the kind of twist people would put into your words.

I used to do a lot of consultative work for the state's power department starting some 35 years ago. It coincided with a time when they'd started electrification of rural areas in earnest. They had a lot of trouble with theft of aluminium conductors along the half-finished 11 and 33kV transmission lines. Once, some low-mid level workers asked me if they should feed power to the lines to discourage the thieves. I nixed the idea.

They can use the CMOS versions with ~100uA of standby current. They have enough output to drive those small buzzers. If not, a single transistor and a resistor can be added.

Well, you could have energized the unfinished segments with a cattle fence type repellant. Not likely to be a fatal lesson. About the same as our non-fatal taser facts.

Probably depends on the rationale for the theft. In the US those thefts are primarily for money to buy drugs/addiction, and judging by some of the stories on that site energized equipment doesn't seem to be much of a deterrent.

I thought of that but I didn't want to risk having someone with a weak heart die from the shock or from falling off the top of a

I assumed the nominally 12/24/48v would need to go through a SMPSU to make it real 12v.

Things that take ac warts normally have a BR+C on the input, so they run fi ne off dc. Maybe you have some exceptions. I don't encounter many positive grounded warts.

sure. Battery systems are still less reliable. Hang your lights where they won't get whacked.

propane/butane are easier & safer and don't whiff

store them with covers

We rarely lose power over here, and when it happens it's not for long enoug h to be a real problem. Having maintained both electric & gas backup lighti ng I'd choose gas any day, far more reliable long term. I'm not sure why yo u're refilling lights in the dark if you have 12 of them.

NT

If that were true, then the national telecom policy of most 3rd world countries would also be considered "racist". Even before copper theft became a problem, it was more expensive to install and maintain a copper POTS line than to build cell sites and hand out cell phones. When the increased price of copper made copper theft profitable, some countries decided that it would be better and cheaper if they subsidized cell phones for the GUM (great unwashed masses) rather than subsidizing reluctant telephone monopolies into installing more copper. It's a good thing they did, because at this time, there are 7 billion people on the planet and about the same number of cell phone subscriptions. "More people around the world have cell phones than ever had land-lines" My guess(tm) is this started when there were about 5.5 billion people on the planet and cell phone penetration was much less. Can you imagine what the country would be like with about 3 billion additional POTS phone lines? Telephone poles and wires everywhere.

Actually, no imagination required. Here's some photos of a POTS phone system in Beirut Lebanon: and telephone lines in India:

So, you should thank the copper thieves for providing the final incentive for Pan Cellphonia (cell phones everywhere) and not installing additional telephone poles and wires everywhere.

In the People's Republic of Santa Cruz (California), we have successfully extended a previous 30 minute line restoration process, into a bureaucratic exercise in power politics last most of the day. I'll spare you the details. Minimum time to restore for a simple wire down is now about 3 hrs. If a tree or pole is involved, about 8 hrs.

I'm undecided. When the power goes out, I usually just grab a book and spend the time reading. I can do that by either electric or gas lighting. Electric is easier, but gas or kerosene are more relaxing and romantic.

Repeating, I currently have 6 lanterns. I once had 12 lanterns.

Unless I'm trying to work on some storm damage to the house at night: I only run one or maybe two lanterns (upstairs and downstairs) at a time. I move it around the house as needed. I really don't think it's a good idea to refill one lantern with kerosene, while having the work area illuminated by the open flame of another lantern. If possible, I use electric illumination during refilling. However, it's still dangerous to refill a hot lantern (or generator).

Those poor thieves...

You try soaking them out...

You try scrubbing them out...

But you still get thieves around the collar.

snip

Well... instead of POTS, we could upgrade that to a better hard line phone in multiple dwelling buildings, and place radio interlinks between the building and the provider. Then the phones would not be the refuse problem they are, and folks could make phone calls without monthly subscription hounds. Land lines, as it were, are cheaper if done right.

But yeah... no (accessible) copper in underdeveloped nations were scrap dealers have no care where the materials were sourced from. As if they did not have enough crime with the prostitution and other petty crimes that get operated. They do not need to add copper filching to that.

Use the other name for it: 'regenerative receiver'.

Made several of them, mostly with tubes, about 60 years ago.

You misunderstand: only white people can be racist.

And indeed it is.

Here, a big row resulted from a referral to average IQ vs country, not even made directly but from the refusal to it being withspoken.

Of course only because the IQ of Africans tends to be much lower in such statistics. Nobody had a problem with the IQ of Asians tending to be higher.

Look at the situation in Nigeria. Oil companies have pipelines running through the country, locals drill holes in them to steal oil, which causes pollution and accidents, killing people. And the blame goes to the oil companies for doing nothing about it.

Electrolytic water purifier?

Cheers

Sir Douglas Hall devised the gloriously named "Spontaflex" receiver. Reflex and regenerative (aka reaction) - later designs had an RF buffer between antenna and regenerative detector so were social to other band listeners. Naturally he reflexed the RF buffer so it also amplified AF.

All fun ingenious stuff. I built one circa 1970 and still have it, works beautifully, with delicate fingers can resolve SSB speech on the 75/80m ham band.

Many were published in British mag "Radio Constructor" available on americanradiohistory.com Also:

piglet

More because it allows them to leapfrog over fixed wire systems. In the UK it is becoming increasingly common not to have a fixed line.

I don't know about that. It happens all over. When the copper price was higher line theft of POTS and train signalling cable was rife in the UK.

They had to change the law to make "No questions asked" metal trading illegal before things came under control. That and the price of copper plunging cut theft of such cables down considerably.