[QuadList] Little more fun

Sat Mar 6 12:49:09 CST 2010

Since the chatter seems to have dwindled somewhat I thought I might pass on a little more fun in the TV business.  I  want everyone to understand that I am not a bad guy, I just love a good gag, even if it is on me and it is well done.

I hope everyone in ops realizes that playing jokes on maint folks is not considered good taste, except sometimes by maint personnel themselves.

One time early in my time in VT Maint, the supervisor told me to go and fix "VT-5", it won't lock up.  I checked all the ops setups and everything looked OK.  So I broke out the schematics and scope, meter, etc. I dug thru the servo and a couple hours later found there is supposed to be a voltage feeding one of four delays in the cap servo causing it to track in either the "Home" track or slip to any of the other heads for tape sync. I traced this from the "Home" track switch. There was nothing feeding any of them, so I reached up and turned the "Home" track switch and found it sitting between track 1 and 2, but the knob had been reset to track 1.

I knew right away I had been had.  I switched it back to the "Home" position, loosened the setscrews in the knob, reset it to the proper position and tightened the setscrews. I put everything back together, took a well earned break, had a couple doughnuts some coffee and went back in the shop where everyone was "Very Busy" and couldn't look at me as they had their noses buried in books, boards, etc. and I announced I got "VT 5" working, that I changed the 5U4 in the 135 Volt Power Supply.

A number of years later I pulled another one on my fellow maint. techs.  Saturdays were reserved for routine maint.  A pair of machines was taken out of service for that purpose.  While the guys on the machine next to the one I was working on went on a break, I fast forwarded their tape  on to the TU reel, put it on the supply side (inverted) and inverted the empty reel and put it on the TU side and fast forwarded the tape on the inverted TU reel.  Then I put the TU reel on the supply side and threaded the machine up and ran it to where it looked like the place they left it.  Now the tape is reversed, the heads are looking at the back of the tape. Nobody noticed it because we had a number of tape types and I don't think anyone associated the numbers with wether the shiny side of dull side was the oxide.

This really had them going and they were getting a bit angry about the whole thing, and I was beginning to fear for my life if they found out about it and blamed me, so when they went to lunch I just took the tape off and put another proper reel on the machine.  I don't remember what I told them the problem was, but it was almost as bad as the 5U4 in the power supply.

I think this would work on the 1" machines also, but I never tried it.

There is another joker out there, my good friend Don, from WTVJ, now Hero in Fla.  Don is a pilot as is Lou Bitton, (Mr. Ampex).  Don and I wound up at AVR-2 school together.  One day Don suggested we rent a plane and go flying.  Sounded good to me so we did, Don flew and Lou was co-pilot and I just rode in the back seat.

After about an hour or so of just flying around, sightseeing, Don thought he would give me a demo of just what this plane could do, so he put it into what felt like a 90 degree nosedive till we almost got to the mountains around Redwood City, then pulled back on the stick and we were in the clouds.  He did this a few times and the wings were straining up and down and I was yelling "Don what the %*&# are you doing, and he and Lou were laughing their heads off, while I was trying to hang on to anything I could get my hands on. After we landed, the ground never felt so good, and after I had a chance to change my underwear we laughed it all off.

A couple days later Lou asked me if I would like to go for a ride in his plane.  It was an old Piper (I think) tail dragger.  It had no radio or battery.  He would pull his car up to it and start it with jumper cables, then get his car out of the way, then hop in the plane before it took off by it 'self.  I explained to Lou  that was the day I had set aside to rearrange my sock drawer and couldn't make it.

By the way Lou bought the plane somewhere on the East coast, perhaps Va. while he was on a teaching assignment.  He had just received his pilot's license. The only way he could get it back to Redwood City was to fly it there.  Not something someone with a brand new license should try, flying from the East coast to the West coast, over the Rockies, etc. So he did it any way.  Somewhere in the mid west he developed some engine trouble and landed at a small airport near by.  Would you believe there was a meeting of a flying club of guys with the same type of plane as Lou's??  Well they fixed his plane up, no charge and got him on his way. Someone was looking out for him.

DE, George Keller

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