(October 2, 2020 at 8:01 am)onlinebiker Wrote: My first radio was a Philco - tube. A.M. no internal antenna or speaker...

Beat that...

"Radio"?

I'm so old I used to listen to my favorite hits on morse code.

(October 3, 2020 at 6:58 pm)ignoramus Wrote: I'm so old I used to listen to my favorite hits on morse code.

You're so old you used to dance to Alexander the Great's greatest hits.

I was Zeus' soccer coach at little league! Arrogant little fucker thought he was God!

(October 2, 2020 at 8:01 am)onlinebiker Wrote: My first radio was a Philco - tube. A.M. no internal antenna or speaker...

Beat that...

My first radio was a diode, an earpiece and a couple pieces of wire with alligator clips.  I surreptitiously hooked one wire to the venetian blinds, and the other to the radiator in my 5th grade class, and secretly listened to a Dodger game on KFI, 640,  the strongest AM radio station in the greater Los Angeles area.  I had to hold the diode just so to get the channel.

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(October 2, 2020 at 10:25 am)Fireball Wrote: One of my dad's friends, who was an accomplished mechanical engineer, knew about the tones generated by the remote. He jangled his car keys and got the TV to change state.

Heh, heh.  I borrowed some tuning forks from my elementary school class science equipment, and fiddled with them until I got something to change on the TV.  Proof of concept, don't you know?

Lest you consider me a thief, yes, I did take the tuning forks back.  Miss Boortz was none the wiser.  (And yes, I do still know all of my elementary school teacher's names.)

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(October 3, 2020 at 6:35 pm)The Valkyrie Wrote:

(October 2, 2020 at 8:01 am)onlinebiker Wrote: My first radio was a Philco - tube. A.M. no internal antenna or speaker...

Beat that...

"Radio"?

GET OFF MY LAWN!

(October 3, 2020 at 6:58 pm)ignoramus Wrote: I'm so old I used to listen to my favorite hits on morse code.

I was the guy sending it....


Seriously.

I have a high speed code certificate from the USCG. 

35 words per minute send/rcv.

(October 4, 2020 at 8:45 am)onlinebiker Wrote:

(October 3, 2020 at 6:58 pm)ignoramus Wrote: I'm so old I used to listen to my favorite hits on morse code.

I was the guy sending it....


Seriously.

I have a high speed code certificate from the USCG. 

35 words per minute send/rcv.

Impressive!  I opted for semaphore for my First-Class badge in Boy Scouts...because it mostly made sense with patterns.  Does that count?  I found Morse to be more difficult to learn, without clear patterns.  Yes, I know it has assigned shorted codes based on relative letter usage frequency, but that didn't make it any easier to learn. 

In those days, I was thought to be a "nerd" or a "geek".  Today, I'd probably have been identified as "on the spectrum".  Oh, well.

(October 4, 2020 at 3:57 pm)A. Secular Human Wrote:

(October 4, 2020 at 8:45 am)onlinebiker Wrote: I was the guy sending it....


Seriously.

I have a high speed code certificate from the USCG. 

35 words per minute send/rcv.

Impressive!  I opted for semaphore for my First-Class badge in Boy Scouts...because it mostly made sense with patterns.  Does that count?  I found Morse to be more difficult to learn, without clear patterns.  Yes, I know it has assigned shorted codes based on relative letter usage frequency, but that didn't make it any easier to learn. 

In those days, I was thought to be a "nerd" or a "geek".  Today, I'd probably have been identified as "on the spectrum".  Oh, well.

I wish I had learned semaphore. It would have been handy if I had gone quartermaster when they got rid of the radioman rate. As it was - I got out of tge service.  I did however try my hand at heliography. (Flashing lights)

It was a bit of a trip. "Translating" it in my head to sound.

We were in REFTRA (refresher training) and the quartermaster was for shit at it - so I got drafted to fill in.

The captain was impressed - because rather I actually called all the signals in proper phonetic alphabet. (Alpha, bravo, charlie rather than abc)

It's pretty cool watching an entire fleet manuever - excecuting turns in unison - with no radio....

Sheep 

Trampoline

Nough said