You never was pursued by a bear during Canadian summer... the durian icecream makes sense after such an episode !
I hate the smell of leaked lytics in power supplies (mainly switching ones) when desoldering to replace. Also in double sided PCBs when a layer makes a carbonic via to the opposite one: very usual in PFC's when dirty or after water fall inside them.
Smells have a very intense effect on memories within the human brain!
I used to nearly go into an alternative reality when driving past a facility that processes hydraulic oil on my daily drive home.
It reminded me much of some development of shock absorber valving from years ago, was a pretty interesting time.
I used to nearly go into an alternative reality when driving past a facility that processes hydraulic oil on my daily drive home.
It reminded me much of some development of shock absorber valving from years ago, was a pretty interesting time.
I attended a technical high school in the late 60's in Miami, which has a less than excellent school system that was far worse in the 60's. The program ran one hour per day in the first year and 3 hours per day in the last two years. The teacher was ex-military and had some repair experience, but his practical experience was all "by the book." He learned a lot of stuff from me that you will NOT find in text books. Those experiences often came with their own smells. Eau de Allen Bradley, vintage 1955 was a good year. Those "bumble bee" capacitors that the guitar geeks drool over, I probably blew up several thousand dollars worth of them. Ditto lots of old Twist Lok electrolytics.
Much of our lab equipment had been donated by a local Air Force base, and was "state of the art" for about 1950. I did have an unlimited supply of metal 6L6 tubes to play with, and lots of Eico 0 to 400 volt supplies to do it. You can wire 4 or 5 of them in series before one bursts into flames due to an arc in the power transformer, so the teacher limited me to three. The teacher got used to the various smells that I created usually by "testing" something for suitability on 120 VAC and occasionally 240 VAC. Tubes with their plates glowing was a common site whenever I was "playing with electricity." One day he walked up to a crowd gathered around my bench when I was trying to extract over 150 watts of audio from four metal 6L6's. He then bet me that I couldn't make the outer metal envelope glow red on a metal 6L6 tube. I won that bet, but stunk up the entire vocational wing of the school in the process, an experience usually provided by the auto repair class across the hall. When heated by glowing metal that black phenolic on the base of an octal tube will burn and emit a terrible stink in the process.
Plastic DIP chips were something found only in the magazines back then, but I learned how to "test" them in the 70's. The fireball and loud 60 Hz buzz created by such a test is awesome, and the stink is also quite unique. Anyone who spent time in the back of the large swap shop building at the Miami hamfest during the fairground years (early 80's through 2000's) might have witnessed or smelled our "chip tester" which later became the "board tester" and the "hard drive tester" when we were building PC's from stuff we bought from defunct computer shops. It was a wall cord with alligator clips on the end. All chips tested were bad, some badder than others. Comments came in three distinct categories, "wow, that was cool, do it again" or "why would you do that" to "that's not safe, I'm calling the fire marshal."
More recently some of my tube and mosfet combo experiments have ended with the pungent aroma of burning mosfet. Either my tastes have changed, or the modern plastic packages smell far worse than the 70's and 80's stuff.
The smell of burning methanol, caster oil, and nitromethane, from my model airplane days. Everything is electric nowadays.
Same here with model airplanes.
No car or bike experience worth mentioning.
No car or bike experience worth mentioning.
I remember my mother commenting that my solder smelled like weed when I soldered. She actually thought I was smoking weed when I was huddled in the basement. (Sometimes I was.)
This summer I found some ancient electronic solder, Dutch Boy brand. It's from the 1950s and my buddy gave it to me when his father (my childhood electronics tutor) died in the early 1980s. I forgot about it but found it while the Big Cleanup was happening at my house. I decided to use it (after seeing how much solder has gone up and my favorite solder is no longer on the market anyway) and sure enough, it smells like weed. It's way too big to use on tiny circuits but works fine on wires etc. It seems to flow a lot better than modern solder too- easy to use.
I remember that smell, but it was not one I was fond of.
Note that attempting to beat the neighborhood rich kid's go cart in a multi lap race by running model airplane fuel mixed with gasoline in an old Briggs and Stratton flathead will make the muffler glow red and come apart at which point a neat blue / orange flame is shooting out of the stub that's left. Continued operation at full power resulted in a gradual slow down until the engine died. Autopsy revealed that there wasn't much left of the exhaust valve.
Pouring some model airplane gas on the lake and lighting it in the middle of the night freaks the neighbors out.
OH, yea, I played with everything from U-control .049 models to a Falcon 56 RC plane which I crashed a few too many times, so I traded it to the rich kid for his old go kart after daddy bought him a new one. After find that planes were too expensive, we raced RC cars on an abandoned airport's runways. My first was a Heathkit. Yes, Heathkit made an RC car with a pretty decent sized engine on it. Unfortunately, the HK used a heavy steel chassis so it wouldn't corner well, so I built an aluminum chassis version. Just as our RC racing was about to escalate into an early 70's version of Mad Max meets Battlebots (my car could launch bottle rockets). The county turned the old airport into a park with a full time staff. The unsupervised fun was over. There was some sanctioned auto racing there in the 80's though. That venue is now a fairgrounds where the Miami hamfest was held and also the site of Florida International University.
Note that attempting to beat the neighborhood rich kid's go cart in a multi lap race by running model airplane fuel mixed with gasoline in an old Briggs and Stratton flathead will make the muffler glow red and come apart at which point a neat blue / orange flame is shooting out of the stub that's left. Continued operation at full power resulted in a gradual slow down until the engine died. Autopsy revealed that there wasn't much left of the exhaust valve.
Pouring some model airplane gas on the lake and lighting it in the middle of the night freaks the neighbors out.
OH, yea, I played with everything from U-control .049 models to a Falcon 56 RC plane which I crashed a few too many times, so I traded it to the rich kid for his old go kart after daddy bought him a new one. After find that planes were too expensive, we raced RC cars on an abandoned airport's runways. My first was a Heathkit. Yes, Heathkit made an RC car with a pretty decent sized engine on it. Unfortunately, the HK used a heavy steel chassis so it wouldn't corner well, so I built an aluminum chassis version. Just as our RC racing was about to escalate into an early 70's version of Mad Max meets Battlebots (my car could launch bottle rockets). The county turned the old airport into a park with a full time staff. The unsupervised fun was over. There was some sanctioned auto racing there in the 80's though. That venue is now a fairgrounds where the Miami hamfest was held and also the site of Florida International University.
These are smells which bring me memories of my childhood:
a) the smell of carob tree flowers
b) the smell of almond tree flowers
c) the smell of wild narcissus flowers
d) the smell of soil after intense rain torrents
e) the smell of the sea, especially, during a violent windy storm
f) the smell of cakes my late mother used to make
g) the smell of freshly plowed soil
a) the smell of carob tree flowers
b) the smell of almond tree flowers
c) the smell of wild narcissus flowers
d) the smell of soil after intense rain torrents
e) the smell of the sea, especially, during a violent windy storm
f) the smell of cakes my late mother used to make
g) the smell of freshly plowed soil
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I was waiting for a Ossa enduro 300i but they never came, ended up with a 2013 Husaberg 300 as my last full on race bike……quit racing 2015.
I wish they would have made that Ossa enduro
https://www.southbayriders.com/forums/threads/134568/
I wish they would have made that Ossa enduro
https://www.southbayriders.com/forums/threads/134568/
That kind of smell has to be filtered and/or pumped away from you.
This said, smells can be very evocative indeed. I have a plan to have appropriate fragrances synchronised with some scenes in movies.
One day, one day. For today, I will be working on efficient power distribution for Christmas lights as well as my electronics lab and other workbenches.
This said, smells can be very evocative indeed. I have a plan to have appropriate fragrances synchronised with some scenes in movies.
One day, one day. For today, I will be working on efficient power distribution for Christmas lights as well as my electronics lab and other workbenches.
I actually had one of those - a 175 in custom metalflake green paint. It belonged to the old man who owned a local Honda dealership and raced it on Sundays and used Blendzall Castor in it. I still remember the shock of seeing it for sale on his showroom floor - it was perfect. Then I got a hold of it...
It was loud and snappy. I put a first generation "Trapp" silencer (the round one) on the stinger, which quieted it down to normal mufflered level. The weight promptly broke the stinger off - I didnt know about things like "brackets" then.
Unfortunately I never raced it, though I dreamt of doing that. Took a hard fall on it that summer, ended up with a concussion and it got taken away from me to avoid further head injury. Awe Ma! Explains some of how I am, to this day.
In upstate New York, the lakes freeze over and they'll plow an oval to race with studded tires, so I bought a bunch of screws, some of which I've retained to this day. One screw per knob; three if you can fit 'em. On the streets, covered in packed snow / ice, you couldnt catch me.
I guess pictures can do it too. Oh yeah, the guy next door who had the TV repair side business smoked "Holiday" brand pipe tobacco. That's my earliest electronics / smell association. I guess you could count the time I took a blowtorch to my father's round tin of flux, because I wanted to make the surface perfectly smooth again. Valid a reason as any to stink up the whole basement.
I started the Ossa once down there too, leaving a nice blue haze in the air.