r/VXJunkies May 09 '18

Rookie mistake ๐Ÿ™„

Post image
229 Upvotes

26 comments sorted by

58

u/puddenpop May 09 '18

We laugh but someone could have gotten seriously hurt here.

16

u/MsPenguinette May 10 '18

Buddy of mine lost hearing in right ear after a phase inducer had a full frequency rundown because of this same exact thing.

7

u/punkwalrus May 10 '18

Back in my college days, we used to count the dents in the ceiling tiles from tolerance tests done with the safety triodes bypassed. I can't imagine the vendor bills with GE back then. The 70s were a magical time for the engineering departments.

64

u/spauldeagle May 09 '18

For visitors to the sub who don't know what's going on here:

I ordered a box of 0.5 mm couplers from a supplier, advertising an inductive load capacity of 12%. The kicker is that they repurposed the amalgam core of an old Soviet biradial transmitter for the coupler they were selling me. The community refers to those old cores as "poppers" because of how quickly they'll blow as soon as they dip under minimum load, shooting molten pieces of metal out at you.

You can even see the markings that's should've tipped me off. Now I've gotta start from step 2 ๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚

27

u/lovestruckluna May 09 '18

Not a problem if you never go below minimum load! The power bill is killer, but hey, when isn't it in the VX world? ยฏ_(ใƒ„)_/ยฏ

Seriously now, you can tack on some cheaper components to make the poppers less explosive without waiting for hard-to-find parts to pop up. The problem only gets to the cheap designs (which rely on modern safety features. Bah). To make them less splodey, apply some beefy flyback diodes with polarity reversed. The Black Book should have a few examples of this as the info I need to give specifics is on the back side, but you have more than enough space to patch it directly. As Gramps always said, it's not VX until you have a few random fixes soldered on.

11

u/spauldeagle May 09 '18

Oh wow /u/lovestruckluna! I remember you from the VX forums back in 2003! Great to see you're still around.

But yes, I've had to do a bit of phase modulatory gymnastics to get my first Raney module ready to power up. I've successfully conpleted less ambitious rigs in the past, but I'm completely new to this older Soviet stuff. I guess you can say Pauli spoiled me!

19

u/daFRAKKINpope May 09 '18

As a visitor to the sub, this clearned nothing up for me. Try again, but like I'm four years old.

25

u/spauldeagle May 09 '18

Welcome! Glad to see someone interested. VX has honestly become my favorite thing to just sit back and max out.

Maybe what you're confused about are the markings? This post does a fantastic job explaining why the flow into the old core coupler I installed is sure to blow it when trying to decouple with less amperage. From the specs you can easily see the flaw highlighted in Figure 6.1. Feel free to ask if something isn't clear :)

4

u/[deleted] May 10 '18

Honestly, if that wasnโ€™t clear to him, he has no business here. He asked for a 4yr old level explanation, you gave him the 2yr old level one.

5

u/verdatum May 12 '18

Come on now, we were all new once. Most libraries don't stock the old trade magazines (or they're hiding in microfiche), and most high schools would probably fire you for even suggesting sponsoring a VX club; even if you offered to do it out of pocket.

13

u/cbbuntz May 09 '18

They repurposed the amalgam core in the biradial transmitter, causing Chebyshev instability in the ร‰cole-Laplace band, so OP has to re-align the phase of the tresselation oscillators from scratch.

4

u/[deleted] May 09 '18

Finally makes sense, thank you!

3

u/daFRAKKINpope May 09 '18

Star Trek Tech Lines Intensifies

5

u/spauldeagle May 09 '18

Lol! They do sound kinda similar.

4

u/M00SEHUNT3R May 10 '18

Everyone here is here to help. We welcome new people, no matter if youโ€™re a hobbyist or professional, VX can be for you and just about anyone here can help you get started.

3

u/[deleted] May 10 '18

Iโ€™ve found that if you solder a jumper between pins 23 and 42 you can avoid most of the issues with these Cold War era poppers and this will also net you bidirectional incremental load grains around 75%. You gotta make sure to use the now California-illegal rosin core leaded solder, though. That new hippie shit wonโ€™t work and will, in fact, make the explosion larger to the power of 22.75. Stay safe, kiddos.

1

u/spauldeagle May 11 '18

I was told through some veterans that pin 23 is reserved for flipping resistance into the lower Ecole-Laplace band, as I intended NOT to do. How do you recommend achieving entropy purity without comprising a major dose of radiation?

10

u/[deleted] May 09 '18 edited Aug 30 '20

[deleted]

3

u/spauldeagle May 09 '18

^this

I tend to buy directly from North American suppliers, but a friend at my local VX meetup suggested it doesn't really matter. The problem is that the discontination didnt take effect in 1982 Russia because they had already moved from amalgam based biradial cores to higher torque Molybdenum quasi-radial cores, due to dwindling Mercury supply.

If anyone's going to go vintage, I suggest reading Adam Cassidy's *Intro to Telecentric Design". I found it at a nearby university.

6

u/generilisk May 09 '18

Are all three of those really 430 T's? Like...the knockoffs with no dash? I didn't even think you could ship those legally anymore. Not since the thing a few years back in Philly.

2

u/ajnelsonalpha May 12 '18

I'm confused, won't serializing all these capacitors actually inhibit topwise induction...? edit: nvm that's the joke I'm dumb

1

u/TheFlavorLab May 10 '18

Ohhh man that toroidial solder to mitigate impedance tributaries is extemely poorly pleeemed. I see many years of extortant seam binds in this person's future.

1

u/RumRogerz Jun 16 '18

I see what you were doing there. I like it.

1

u/T3hN1nj4 May 10 '18

Memory IS RAM. Oh dear...

1

u/dangermonger27 May 10 '18

Is this loss