[fun] Weird electronic circuits collection

And I have to pay for roads and national parks even if I don't drive or camp.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting gets, from the federal government, about $1.50 per US resident each year. Any estimate on the average TV fee in the UK?

I watch maybe 30 hours of PBS TV per year [1], so that works out to about 5 cents per hour. My wife watches a bunch of those stupid BBC mysteries, so she pays a lot less per hour.

I do listen to NPR radio in the car [2], commuting to/from work, so that's really cheap.

Do the brits tax car radios?

Our local PBS station, KQED, is financed almost entirely by local, voluntary support. It has to pay CPB/NPR for content.

[1] I was watching the new Poldark series for a while, but it became a cartoon never-ending soap opera, so I ordered some more books.

I suppose Sherlock is gone, but it was getting preposterous too.

[2] when I can stand it.
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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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John Larkin
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Except when they're SCRs!

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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John Larkin

Sure, 5% VAT. A long way from socialism to socialism.

Best regards, Piotr

Reply to
Piotr Wyderski

Wrong again. It was in the 90s % for high earners when the Beatles wrote that. It's why they wrote it. It's much less today, albeit still high.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

no. Radio was taxed in the 1920s but that's long gone.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

Wwwwooosshhh! No need to duck.

Reply to
krw

Or a myriad of other structures.

Reply to
krw

AFAIK Germans do. Well, now it's moot anyhow because they made it a poll tax, assuming everyone has access to radio and TV so must pay the tax. Probably the only way to extricate oneself is not to have a TV, radio, smart phone or computer, none of that. Else the tax man cometh.

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Regards, Joerg 

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Joerg

:

bour government.

that. It's why they wrote it. It's much less today, albeit still high.

The US doesn't collect enough in taxes to deal with the needs of it's less well-off citizens. Krw doesn't understand this, so he thinks that any gove rnment that collects more in taxes than the US government is collecting too much, and ripping off it's citizens.

In reality the US not only collects too little money in taxes, but also mis applies what it does collect to keeping millionaires even happier, thus rip ping off everybody else (krw included) but krw's cognitive deficits means t hat he's never going to realise this - he's not only a sucker, but also a c omplacent sucker. If anybody in government gave him an even break, he'd loo k for the catch.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

welcome to the plonk filter. Life's too short.

Reply to
tabbypurr

But you just had to advertise that you're a snowfake.

Reply to
krw

:

ote:

labour government.

ote that. It's why they wrote it. It's much less today, albeit still high.

Plonking krw isn't the action of a snowflake - krw's contemptible "insights " are interesting as a window in right-wing non-thinking, particularly in t hat krw doesn't seem to think at all, while most right-wingers merely don't think much, but they aren't remotely interesting in their own (far-)right.

Plonking krw is simply avoiding a waste of time. I don't do it because I've got time to waste, but few have that luxury.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

No, asshole, not everyone here lives in England or studies their taxes.

You really are an asshole, you know that? You are incapable of a polite reply to anyone but Sloman.

You will now justify being an asshole to Conservatives because they're all assholes, and you will be ab asshole to me.

Mark L. Fergerson

Reply to
alien8752

You really are an idiot. People don't have a sense of whether their taxes are high or low? It's not discussed in Britland? You're lying.

Considering the source, THANK YOU!

Considering the communist source...

You could just kilfile me but don't bother to announce it. It's not necessary and no one cares what a leftist has to say.

Reply to
krw

Bring back 'Rumpole of the Bailey'

formatting link
Episodes available on Youtube. Mikek

Reply to
amdx

e:

:

bour

.

Taxes high or low compared with what? The British compare their taxes with Continental Europe - which tend to collect more of the GDP in tax, and with the US which collects less - but the US gives a lot less back to the taxpa yers in terms of education and health care. Krw hasn't got a clue about any of that.

e reply to anyone but Sloman.

Bizarre reaction. Krw is an unpleasant person, but he lacks the interperson al skills to be aware of this, as exhibited here.

all assholes, and you will be ab asshole to me.

Krw can't tell the difference between socialism and communism, and does see m to think that there is any. By that logic, Sweden would be as nasty a pla ce to live as Stalin's Russia, but krw doesn't know much, and thinks even l ess.

Krw claims not to care what people he classifies as "leftists" say, but he reacts to them.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
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bill.sloman

HV rectifier tubes make good 20KV or so amplifiers; the control is filament voltage. A class-AB totem pole stage would be cool.

There are also multi-kilovolt photodiodes that one can do fun things with.

Before things settled down, there were many strange semiconductors. Like liquid-electrolyte-gate fets, cats-whisker microwave diodes (still being made), point-contact transistors, double-emitter transistors, germanium jfets, copper oxide and selenium and and other exotica.

Ferrite microwave circulators and optical isolators are interesting examples of how you can't violate conservation of energy.

--
John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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John Larkin

The core memory in a juke box "Tormat" selector.

The magnetic orientation of some of the ferrite cores is flipped 'forward' by current from selector buttons on the front panel. A pair of spring-loaded contacts, attached to the record selector carriage, travel over rows of brass studs, pushing current through each core wire in turn to flip the magnetism 'back'. Only those cores that have been preselcted and flipped forward will flip back and that will generate a pulse in the sense wire that runs through all the cores.

The sense-wire pulse is amplified by a valve and then used to trigger a thyratron, which operates a relay that stops the carriage and allows it to play the selected record. The carriage then goes on searching up and down, looking for another flipped core.

A wonderful mix of early computer technology and electro-mechanical systems from an earlier age.

--
~ Adrian Tuddenham ~ 
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Adrian Tuddenham

The very early ones picked up radiated signal from the line output transformers and scan coils, but that propagated from house to house via.the mains wiring and made direction finding unreliable.

The next stage was a very sensitive VHF receiver (Eddystone 770R) with a Panoramic Adaptor that could sweep the spectrum and detect radiation from the local ocsillator in the tuner. With a rotating dipole and metal reflector as an aerial system, it was much more directional and reliable.

When transistorised equipment came in, along with UHF television, an updated version of the local oscillator detector system was used, with a pair of helical log-periodic aerials mounted on the roof of the van. One of the aerials was fixed and the other could be slid towards and away from it to keep the aerials a constant fraction of a wavelength apart as the receiver was tuned. By combining the outputs of the two aerials, it was possible to use the interference pattern to give very sharp direction finding. A Polaroid camera was used to take a photograph of the premises with an oscilloscope picture superimposed on it, showing exactly where the offending set was located in the house. That usually scared the householder into incriminating themselves or admitting the offence outright.

The actual offence used to be "Using the premises for the reception of television signals". I don't know if that is still the legal wording.

There is an assumption in the U.K. that every household has a television set and watches it; which is tough on the likes of me, who don't. I keep receiving threatening letters from the licencing authorities, which I promptly recycle as waste paper.

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~ Adrian Tuddenham ~ 
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A mechanically-vibrated vacuum capacitor used in a Pye electrometer/pH meter to convert a steady milli-voltage from a very high impedance probe into an A.C. signal without loading the source and without zero drift.

The A.C. signal was subsequently amplified, synchronously rectified and used as feedback to back-bias the 'earthed' plate of the capacitor until the A.C error signalwas reduced to a virtually nil. Any non-linearity, conversion efficiency drift or general instability of the capacitor was irrelevant, because all of that was taken out by the feedback action. The output of the synchronous detector was available at low impedance to drive a large moving coil meter on the front panel and a separate chart recorder if necessary..

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~ Adrian Tuddenham ~ 
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Adrian Tuddenham

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