Subject: [removed] Digest V2005 #369
From: [removed]@[removed]
Date: 11/30/2005 1:05 PM
To: [removed]@[removed]

------------------------------


                            The Old-Time Radio Digest!
                              Volume 2005 : Issue 369
                         A Part of the [removed]!
                             [removed]
                                 ISSN: 1533-9289


                                 Today's Topics:

  Radio and TV repair                   [ BH <radiobill@[removed]; ]
  ELLIOTT LEWIS' BIRTHDAY $$$           [ Sandy Singer <sinatradj@[removed]; ]
  #OldRadio IRC Chat this Thursday Nig  [ charlie@[removed] ]
  Christmas show                        [ "Walden Hughes" <hughes1@[removed]; ]
  Tube Amplifiers                       [ John Mayer <mayer@[removed]; ]
  'Racket Squad' sponsor                [ Herb Harrison <herbop@[removed] ]
  The March of Progress                 [ "Stephen A Kallis, Jr" <skallisjr@j ]
  11-30 births/deaths                   [ Ron Sayles <bogusotr@[removed]; ]
  Shows                                 [ JayHick@[removed] ]
  Bad Boys Rape Other Young Girls But   [ "Druian, Raymond B SPL" <[removed] ]
  Bing Crosby on TCM in December        [ Kermyt Anderson <kermyta@[removed]; ]
  Joan Alexander                        [ "Bruce Dettman" <bdettman@[removed] ]

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:53:57 -0500
From: BH <radiobill@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Radio and TV repair

Mark Kinsler posted:

A resistor would burn out, and because it was burned out, you couldn't measure
its resistance and thus buy a replacement.  No, you'd have to send back the
old one, which was marked with a special, unreadable code, to the
manufacturer, who for like, two bucks would send you a new mystery resistor.

If the color code (easily learned by anyone who wanted to) on the resistor
was still readable, one could easily purchase it from their local radio shop,
who kept a stock of resistors, or from many of the electronic parts houses
available. Even steal one out of another junker radio. If it wasn't readable,
a schematic would usually show the value. There was no need to send it back
to the manufacturer. If the resistor was burned, then likely something else
was wrong that caused the resistor to get to hot.

A guy name of Howard W Sams in Indiana found opportunity in this.
There were other manuals of this sort--Rider's was the biggest competition,
I think--but Howard had the market.

I can't imagine why the manufacturer would be concerned with this as
they weren't in the repair business. In fact Sam's usually obtained
the schematic and specs from the manufacturer.

Sam's didn't start publishing until 1946, Rider's started publishing
schematics and parts lists in the 1920s and stopped around 1949. Rider's
got their information mostly from the manufacturer and sometimes those
very early schematics might not even have the value of the parts listed.
Another company, Beitmans, was also a publisher of schematics.

In reference to the 'automatic tube testers" at the local drugstore.
A lot of these machines were 'calibrated' to ensure that even a slightly
weak tube would read in the 'replace' section of the meter scale. They
sold a lot of tubes that way. As an aside to this, there are still tons
of tubes available for these vintage radios, I have quite a large stock
myself, but the inventory is limited as there are no more being made. As
a result, we don't have the luxury of tossing a tube just because it may
show a bit weak on the tester. I have seen tubes that would barley give
a reading on the tester, yet still work just fine in the radio. So as
long as a tube still preforms, it stays in the radio, only when it
completely gives up the ghost will it get tossed.

Do-it-yourself repair - In the 1930s Alfred A. Ghirardi published several
books on radio repair which included all kinds of data on replacement parts.
Hugo Gernsback also published books on radio theory and repair. In the very
early days of radio, many built their own sets, as there were periodicals
like Radio News and Radio Craft that had schematics and instructions for
constructing as well as articles on theory. Young boys who built crystal sets
and then
graduated on to tube sets often became radio repairmen later on, many
self-taught.

As far as repairs, more often than not, the problem might often be a
defective tube, simple and fast to repair. Today, the problem with those old
radios is
more often than not, something other than a tube. The capacitors in old sets
become defective (electrically leaky) over time, whether the radio is played
or not. The filter capacitors will almost always need replacing. I have
restored hundreds of vintage radios and having to replace a tube is a rather
rare occurrence, occasionally a burned or out of spec resistor, but I always
change out all of the capacitors.

There used to be color codes for capacitors and inductors,
too, but only resistors have retained theirs.  It's a very poor practice and
is gradually being abandoned.

You won't find modern capacitors marked with the color code, but
resistors continue to use it.

Bill H.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2005 23:55:10 -0500
From: Sandy Singer <sinatradj@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  ELLIOTT LEWIS' BIRTHDAY $$$

26 year old Elliott Lewis was given leave from the service for 5 hours to
record Gordon Jenkins' Manhattan Tower.  Made more $$$ that week than the
government paid him all month!  Bruce Jenkins' book about his father is
now in a bookstore near you.

[removed]
           Sandy
[removed]
         [removed]

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 02:12:00 -0500
From: charlie@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  #OldRadio IRC Chat this Thursday Night!

A weekly [removed]

For the best in OTR Chat, join IRC (Internet Relay Chat), StarLink-IRC
Network, the channel name is #OldRadio.  We meet Thursdays at 8 PM Eastern
and go on, and on! The oldest OTR Chat Channel, it has been in existence
over nine years, same time, same channel! Started by Lois Culver, widow
of actor Howard Culver, this is the place to be on Thursday night for
real-time OTR talk!

Our "regulars" include OTR actors, soundmen, collectors, listeners, and
others interested in enjoying OTR from points all over the world. Discussions
range from favorite shows to almost anything else under the sun (sometimes
it's hard for us to stay on-topic)...but even if it isn't always focused,
it's always a good time!

For more info, contact charlie@[removed]. We hope to see you there, this
week and every week!

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 07:43:40 -0500
From: "Walden Hughes" <hughes1@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Christmas show

Hi Everybody,

does any one have a copy of a Christmas show that was part of the 50
Christmas shows from Radio Yesteryear catalog?  I recall the story line was
that Christmas was celebrated in a Prisoner of war Camp during World War II.
It might have been a Suspense or Escape.  Take care,

Walden

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 07:44:11 -0500
From: John Mayer <mayer@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Tube Amplifiers

Christopher Werner <werner1@[removed]; wrote:

In high school, a fresh-from-the-Air Force instructor taught us how
to design tube amplifiers. Really useful in 1974 as debates over
tube vs solid state audio amplifiers were common in the halls! Never
used the knowledge once afterward.

Well, apparently those debates have not yet ended. A friend of mine
who plays both acoustic and electric guitar tells me many performers
vastly prefer tube amplifiers over solid state and will pay premium
prices for them. I'm not really sure what the advantage is, but I
gather some think them to have a warmer sound, or perhaps just a more
realistic one.

For that matter, there are still a few DJ's using vinyl, and some
companies still cut vinyl discs just for them.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 07:44:38 -0500
From: Herb Harrison <herbop@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  'Racket Squad' sponsor

I remember seeing a TV program (I think 'Racket Squad') that had, at the
end, a segment where the stars (1 male, one female) discussed the new,
improved smell of the sponsor's product: Lifebuoy Soap. This sticks in my
memory because the "girl" said something to the effect that the old soap
smelled bad; and the guy then said that the new soap smelled much better,
and that the viewers should buy the "new Lifebuoy" because it had the same
superior cleaning power as the old product, but smelled better.
- Some OTR-related questions:
-- Did Lifebuoy Soap sponsor radio shows?
-- If so, did they say something in their commercials like "You know it's
strong, because it smells astringent!"?

Just curious,
Herb Harrison

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 07:46:14 -0500
From: "Stephen A Kallis, Jr" <skallisjr@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  The March of Progress

Dr. Michael Biel, speaking of radio repair, notes that using the resistor
color coding was facilitated by,

If you can memorize the colors and their values,
they used to sell little cardboard color-wheel decoders
very similar to what Little Orphan Annie used.

I know that Annie was a resourceful child, but I had no idea she was into
radio repair!  :-)

Actually, the color-stripe decoders I saw used multiple wheels for each
band position, whereas all Radio Orphan Annie Secret Society Decoder Pins
had but one.

As for the demise of the manual system in the 1970s
that he describes, it really became partially a
function of our throw-away society.

Here I have a different perspective.  The technology forced the
throw-away society on us.  Many years ago, in an April Fool article in
Radio-Electronics magazine, a "paper radio" was proposed, and a circuit
diagram was provided so that home experimenters could construct their
own.  The upshot of the article was that while such a radio could work,
it would never be manufactured because it would be less expensive to
replace an ailing one than to repair it.  Less than a decade later, the
jocular article was fact, though the paper was replaced with circuit
cards.  Today, with functional radios available for a dollar or less,
nobody would dream of setting up a radio repair shop as a functional
business; it's less expensive to replace.  (Adjusting for inflation,
today's budget radios in 1950 dollars would be about a nickle.)

Electronic technology has been perhaps the leading edge in creating
throw-away products.

Stephen A. Kallis, Jr.

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 07:46:24 -0500
From: Ron Sayles <bogusotr@[removed];
To: Olde Tyme Radio List <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  11-30 births/deaths

November 30th births

11-30-1667 - Jonathan Swift - Dublin, Ireland - d. 10-19-1745
writer: "The Columbia Workshop"
11-30-1873 - Frederic William Wile - La Porte, IN - d. 4-7-1941
commentator: "Political Situation in Washington"
11-30-1874 - Winston Churchill - Oxfordshire, England - d. 1-24-1965
british prime minister: War time broadcasts
11-30-1885 - Charles West - Pittsburgh, PA - d. 10-10-1943
actor: "Dramas of Youth"
11-30-1889 - Vito Pellettieri - d. 4-xx-1977
stage manager: "Grand Ole Opry"
11-30-1890 - Ramsey Hill - Georgetown, Guyana - d. 2-3-1976
actor: "Escape"; "NBC University Theatre"
11-30-1894 - David Ogden Stewart - Columbus, OH - d. 8-2-1980
humorist: "Lux Radio Theatre"
11-30-1900 - Geoffrey Household - Briston, England - d. 10-4-1988
writer: "NBC Presents: Short Story"
11-30-1906 - John Dickson Carr - Uniontown, PA - d. 2-27-1977
writer: "Suspense"; "Cabin B-13"; "Murder by Experts"
11-30-1913 - John K. M. McCaffrey - Moscow, ID - d. 10-3-1983
newscaster: "Author Meets the Critics"; "What Makes You Tick?"
11-30-1914 - Charles Hawtrey - Hounslow, Middlesex, England - d. 10-27-1988
actor, comedian: Hubert Lane "Just William"
11-30-1915 - Brownie McGhee - Knoxville, TN - d. 2-16-1996
blues guitarist, singer: "New World A' Coming"; "This Is Jazz)
11-30-1919 - Joe Cabbibo - d. 10-xx-1973
sound effects: "Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar"; "Tennessee Jed". "Counterspy"
11-30-1920 - Virginia Mayo - St. Louis, MO - d. 1-17-2005
actress: "Lux Radio Theatre"
11-30-1923 - Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. - New York, NY
actor: "Lux Radio Theatre"
11-30-1926 - Dick Crenna - Los Angeles, CA - d. 1-18-2003
actor: Oogie Pringle, "A Date with Judy"; "Walter Denton, "Our Miss Brooks"
11-30-1929 - Dick Clark - Mt. Vernon, NY
host: "March of Dimes March of Stars"; "Tribute to Murray the K"
11-30-1947 - David Mamet - Chicago, IL
writer: "Earplay"

November 30th deaths

01-11-1908 - Lionel Stander - The Bronx, NY - d. 11-30-1994
actor: J. Riley Farnsworth "Life of Riley"; Hoolihan "Grapevine Rancho"
01-27-1916 - Merrill Mueller - New York, NY - d. 11-30-1980
reporter: "NBC Stands By"; "Morning News Roundup"; "The Navy Hour"
01-28-1892 - Ernst Lubitsch - Berlin Germany - d. 11-30-1947
film director: Intermission Guest "Lux Radio Theatre"; "Gulf Screen Guild
Theatre"
02-10-1910 - Joyce Grenfell - London, England - d. 11-30-1979
writer, actress: "How"; "A Note with Music"; "We Beg to Differ"
02-25-1901 - Zeppo Marx - New York, NY  - d. 11-30-1979
comedian: (Marx Brothers) "American Review"
04-08-1900 - Bert "Mad Russian" Gordon - New York, NY - d. 11-30-1974
comedian: "Eddie Cantor Show"; Yasha "Duffy's Tavern"
04-28-1900 - Val Gielgud - London England - d. 11-30-1981
writer: (Brother of John Gielgud) "The Columbia Workshop"
05-08-1899 - Arthur Q. Bryan - Brooklyn, NY - d. 11-30-1959
actor: George 'Doc' Gamble "Fibber McGee and Molly"; Floyd Munson "Great
Gildersleeve"
05-10-1884 - Olga Petrova - Tur Brook, England - d. 11-30-1977
actress, writer: "Mary Margaret McBride"
05-12-1901 - Harold "Scrappy" Lambert - New Brunswick, NY - d. 11-30-1987
singer: Mark "Smith Brothers: Trade and Mark"; "Town Hall Tonight"
06-23-1894 - Laurie York Erskine - England - d. 11-30-1976
author: "Renfrew of the Mounted"; "Adventure Story"; "National Children's Weel"
07-29-1900 - Don Redman - Piedmont, WV - d. 11-30-1964
bandleader: "Don Redman and His Orchestra"; "Chipso Radio Program"
08-15-1910 - Johnny Roventini - Brooklyn, NY - d. 11-30-1998
commercial announcer: (Call for Phil-lip Mor-ress) "Ferde Grofe Show";
"Johnny Presents"
10-09-1922 - Phil Sterling - d. 11-30-1998
actor: "Radio City Playhouse"; "Hilltop House"; "Special Agent"
10-16-1854 - Oscar Wilde - Dublin, Ireland - d. 11-30-1900
writer: "The Columbia Workshop"
12-04-1889 - Buck Jones - Vincennes, IN - d. 11-30-1942
actor: "Hoofbeats"
12-08-1906 - Richard Llewellyn - St. David's, Wales - d. 11-30-1983
author: "Lux Radio Theatre"; "NBC University Theatre"
--
Ron Sayles
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 11:29:40 -0500
From: JayHick@[removed]
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Shows

Have you ever run across information on either of the following:

1- A children's program/character, a rabbit named Bunny Desmond?  My
childhood memory places him circa 1948 and as a five minute segment
somewhere.  He may have been local to Central New York.

2- The Buckaroos, a Country-Western music show.  Also probably local
to the same region.

Contact Jo Ann Todesco <joann@[removed];

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 13:31:03 -0500
From: "Druian, Raymond B SPL" <[removed]@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Bad Boys Rape Other Young Girls But . . .
 (RE: Radio and TV Repair)

A number of thoughts were brought to mind by the current thread about Radio
and TV Repair. The little color wheel with the dials to display the color
codes of resistors and capacitors was one of my prized possessions as a kid.
I loved twirling the dials. Never mind that the color code isn't all that
difficult to learn, especially with a mnemonic sentence, "Bad Boys Rape Other
Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly" equates to Black (0), Brown (1), Red
(2), Orange (3), Yellow (4), Green (5), Blue (6), Violet (7), Grey (8), White
(9). Yes, I realize that the sentence isn't politically, or even morally,
correct, but please keep in mind that 40 to 50 years ago, techies were almost
exclusively male, operating in an exclusively male society, and most of us
had the emotional knowledge of twelve year olds. What I find amusing about
all this, after so much time, is that the color wheel was entirely
unnecessary for what turns out is a pretty simple code. The mnemonic sentence
is only useful to me now because I haven't dealt with those codes for 20 or
30 years. When one works with the parts daily, deciphering the colors becomes
second nature. Sadly, with the advent of solid state electronics, and their
low voltages, resistors no longer have to dissipate the amount of power that
they did forty years ago. Thus the standard size of a resistor has gone down
from 1/2 watt to 1/8, or maybe 1/16 watt. This has allowed considerable
miniaturization, and there is now hardly any room on the resistor body to
print either stripes of color nor a value number. At the same time, folks
like myself require devices to become ever larger in order that we might be
able to see them.

Back in the mid 60s, after several years of being a ham and screwing around
with all sorts of electronics work and training (even a few months at DeVry
Tech in Chicago), I took advantage of one of the Great Society programs and
entered a training program with RCA Service Co., where I became a Radio-TV
repairman. I quickly learned that tube testers were a joke, giving both false
positives and false negatives. The only course of action that really worked
was direct substitution of a suspect tube. The tricky part was figuring out
which tube to try first. Sadly, about 80 to 90 % of all service calls were
the direct result of some vacuum tube going bad. I think most folk don't
realize just how much heat is generated by a vacuum tube TV set. The tubes
emit electrons because the cathode is heated. It is much like stuffing about
25 infra-red heating bulbs together in a relatively small cabinet. True,
solid state equipment is more difficult to repair, but without all that heat,
the time between failures increases dramatically. The likelihood of having a
color TV set last for over 10 years without a service call is quite high, and
after all that time, who wants to even think of having an old set serviced?
It probably costs more to fix than to replace, and don't forget, we're
talking about replacing an old set (often more than 10 years before needing
its first repair) with a new one that has all the latest features. I have a
bad feeling that if I had remained with RCA Service, I'd have worked my way
high enough to be laid off at just about the time when I'd have been at an
age where nobody would hire me, but without enough time in for retirement --
a situation faced by many in my age group. BTW, during my stay at RCA, I
think I serviced one black and white TV and one Radio-Phonograph combination;
all the rest were color TVs. And heaven help the service tech who was called
to a bar to service one of those TVs that is mounted way up high in a hole in
the wall, so that it's impossible to see the front of the set from behind it
(or vice versa).

Thanx,

 B. Ray

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 13:36:46 -0500
From: Kermyt Anderson <kermyta@[removed];
To: [removed]@[removed]
Subject:  Bing Crosby on TCM in December

The December Star of the Month on Turner Classic Movies is Bing Crosby.
They'll be showing 18 of his films, including a few Bob Hope ones in
which he has small cameos. Apparently Monday nights will be Bing Night.

[removed],,111407,[removed]

Kermyt

------------------------------

Date: Wed, 30 Nov 2005 13:37:42 -0500
From: "Bruce Dettman" <bdettman@[removed];
To: <[removed]@[removed];
Subject:  Joan Alexander

Just learned quite by accident that Joan Alexander of "Superman" radio fame
is my doctor's office manager's first cousin.  She's never met the actress
but would like to know more about her life and career. Any suggestions for
sources on this?

Thanks.

Bruce Dettman

--------------------------------
End of [removed] Digest V2005 Issue #369
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