Back in 1983/84 I use to work at Philips at their mobile radio factory in Clarinda Rd Clayton, and on my bench among other things I had this fabulous HP frequency synthesized oscillator. It would go to 20 Mhz with a resolution of 0.001 Hz and to 60Mhz with somewhat less resolution. Anyway, the fellow on the next bench always had his radio turned on and I didn’t like this very much so I plotted a scheme. It was common practice among the techs there to use an RF oscillator to make a heterodyne whistle in other people’s AM radio just to annoy them, but they would usually do a search and discover the perpetrator. For those that have not come across it, a heterodyne whistle is when an AM radio receives two signals only slightly apart in frequency and it puts out the difference of the two frequencies as an audible whistle, the pitch being the actual difference frequency of the two received RF signals. Anyway, while my intended victim was at lunch one day, I set my oscillator going and figured the exact frequency of the station he was listening to. Then I adjusted the oscillator ever so slightly off this frequency. When the radio was on again after lunch, on went my oscillator too except that the beat note coming from the speaker was somewhere in the vicinity of 0.001 Hz. Inaudible of course, but it meant the sound from the radio gradually decreased over a 5 to 10 minute period as the phase of the two signals gradually crept apart, period giving the impression that the batteries were going flat. He’d open it up, measure the batteries and seeing they were ok he’d scratch his head, put the radio back together and away it would go just fine. I’d have the oscillator off for a while and then back on it would go. Took him ages to figure out just what was going on. 
Been There, Done That.
Graham, you are not the only one !.
Back in my younger days I worked in a Telecom Trunk Service Repair Lab, and yes we had one old technician who insisted on listening to the Janine Walker morning talk back show, and yes it drove us up the wall.
We tried different strategies to bugger his reception, including building small (unstable) oscillator circuits, and leaving them somewhere around his bench.
Because of the instability, the oscillator would very slowly sweep back and forth causing whistling in his radio.
Of course it was a relatively simple matter for him to direction find and locate the small transmitter causing him grief, so we hit on the idea of concealing the oscillator inside a block of wood and screwing it to the underside of his bench right underneath his radio, and so it looked like part of the bench structure.
This annoyed the hell out of him, and after about a week I came to work one morning to find a small prototype circuit that I was working on cut into little pieces and placed in a neat little pile on my workspace, but of course that was not the offending inteference source.
We allowed this to stay like this for a couple of weeks until the battery went flat, and then we were back to that damm radio program.
Above the benches were terminals wired to cables that ran past every bench position.
In one corner of the room was a large RF test set, that could be set to sweep between two frequencies at variable rate.
Of course we adjusted this to slowly sweep back and forth in the manner of the mini oscillators, causing hetrodyning.
We got bored with that so I brought a radio cassete from home and connected the audio output to the modulation input of the test set.
While he was at lunch one day, we adjusted his radio to an unused frequency, and used the test set to re-transmit the output from the radio cassette.
By this means we could remotely adjust his volume level, and same thing, he examined his radio for this strangely varying volume level.
This still was not enough for us so one morning when all was quiet we played the ultimate prank.
As the radio announcer said "we'll go to another call now", we switched the RC to tape and played a
Derek and Clive recording.
He was working away, and then looked up and at his radio in disbelief and reached over and turned it off.
Next day he came to work with headphones and our problem was solved.
I still laugh about this.
Eric, The Mischievous.
Graham, you are not the only one !.
Back in my younger days I worked in a Telecom Trunk Service Repair Lab, and yes we had one old technician who insisted on listening to the Janine Walker morning talk back show, and yes it drove us up the wall.
We tried different strategies to bugger his reception, including building small (unstable) oscillator circuits, and leaving them somewhere around his bench.
Because of the instability, the oscillator would very slowly sweep back and forth causing whistling in his radio.
Of course it was a relatively simple matter for him to direction find and locate the small transmitter causing him grief, so we hit on the idea of concealing the oscillator inside a block of wood and screwing it to the underside of his bench right underneath his radio, and so it looked like part of the bench structure.
This annoyed the hell out of him, and after about a week I came to work one morning to find a small prototype circuit that I was working on cut into little pieces and placed in a neat little pile on my workspace, but of course that was not the offending inteference source.
We allowed this to stay like this for a couple of weeks until the battery went flat, and then we were back to that damm radio program.
Above the benches were terminals wired to cables that ran past every bench position.
In one corner of the room was a large RF test set, that could be set to sweep between two frequencies at variable rate.
Of course we adjusted this to slowly sweep back and forth in the manner of the mini oscillators, causing hetrodyning.
We got bored with that so I brought a radio cassete from home and connected the audio output to the modulation input of the test set.
While he was at lunch one day, we adjusted his radio to an unused frequency, and used the test set to re-transmit the output from the radio cassette.
By this means we could remotely adjust his volume level, and same thing, he examined his radio for this strangely varying volume level.
This still was not enough for us so one morning when all was quiet we played the ultimate prank.
As the radio announcer said "we'll go to another call now", we switched the RC to tape and played a
Derek and Clive recording.
He was working away, and then looked up and at his radio in disbelief and reached over and turned it off.
Next day he came to work with headphones and our problem was solved.
I still laugh about this.
Eric, The Mischievous.
my HP DSO
not the DSO per se, but the Selective Level Meter (which is a great receiver) will play Beethoven's 9th -- it's programmed right into the RAM of the machine ! I kid you not, a Swedish ham radio operator pointed it out to me. I use the TCXO of the SSR to drive the frequency source of my HP5334B
not the DSO per se, but the Selective Level Meter (which is a great receiver) will play Beethoven's 9th -- it's programmed right into the RAM of the machine ! I kid you not, a Swedish ham radio operator pointed it out to me. I use the TCXO of the SSR to drive the frequency source of my HP5334B
One time back when I worked for NASA a coworker was calibrating the CTI-correction table for the main lens on the Chandra X-Ray telescope. I thought it would be hilarious if i changed the Doppler parameter b to the column density and the Equivalent Width of a single ion ( in this case let Lambda = 2290.90 and the Redshift = 1.2331...or else the joke isnt very funny )
Anyways, when he arrived at the coefficient 3.67 for the HI_1215 ion, and realized that Lambda was off by a factor of .02, he got so flustered he broke his pencil in half!! Later, he saw that about 257 Lyman-alpha clouds have been identified in the redshift range 1.201 - 2.247, instead of 1-2.034. I've never seen a quantum physician get so red!! I chuckled into my NICMOS pipeline calibrated and reprocessed data manual until i could barely breathe.
My jubliance quickly faded, however, when a vein around his left temple grew distorted and popped like a tick on the control console near his head! Blood spurted all over the elevated calibration deck and he fell to his knees, still with an angry look on his magenta-hued face and his palm cupped over his hemmoraging forehead. I ran over to him, as he writhed on the floor, blood soaking into his white labcoat.
"Why were my results so skewed?" he asked, as his bloodied hand gripped my forearm.
"I altered them as a joke, you jagoff!" i replied.
By that point, he had started to lose his lucidity and begin mumbling something about a druidic curse of a million sores, but i had already run off to the cafeteria to loosen the cap on all the salt shakers so they'd come off when people tried to use them.
-Maz
Anyways, when he arrived at the coefficient 3.67 for the HI_1215 ion, and realized that Lambda was off by a factor of .02, he got so flustered he broke his pencil in half!! Later, he saw that about 257 Lyman-alpha clouds have been identified in the redshift range 1.201 - 2.247, instead of 1-2.034. I've never seen a quantum physician get so red!! I chuckled into my NICMOS pipeline calibrated and reprocessed data manual until i could barely breathe.
My jubliance quickly faded, however, when a vein around his left temple grew distorted and popped like a tick on the control console near his head! Blood spurted all over the elevated calibration deck and he fell to his knees, still with an angry look on his magenta-hued face and his palm cupped over his hemmoraging forehead. I ran over to him, as he writhed on the floor, blood soaking into his white labcoat.
"Why were my results so skewed?" he asked, as his bloodied hand gripped my forearm.
"I altered them as a joke, you jagoff!" i replied.
By that point, he had started to lose his lucidity and begin mumbling something about a druidic curse of a million sores, but i had already run off to the cafeteria to loosen the cap on all the salt shakers so they'd come off when people tried to use them.
-Maz
Game-enabled DSO.
We've got a number of HP54600B dso's here at work and you can play Tetris on them! Even enter your hi-score and name. After the splash screen has disappeared and the trace grid has been displayed, press the [Print|Utility] key, then release. When the print menu is displayed, press and hold the second and third keys (from the left) directly below the CRT display, simultaneously. This will bring up the game.
We've got a number of HP54600B dso's here at work and you can play Tetris on them! Even enter your hi-score and name. After the splash screen has disappeared and the trace grid has been displayed, press the [Print|Utility] key, then release. When the print menu is displayed, press and hold the second and third keys (from the left) directly below the CRT display, simultaneously. This will bring up the game.
Maz, that was very funny. That's the best piece of prose I have read in a long while.
Thank You!
🙂
Thank You!
🙂
Thanks, Lawriebuck...
i hope people have as much fun reading my posts as i do writing them. I have only mass quantities of bud light to thank for my sillyness. Did you read my other post in the "worst DIY project ever" thread? If you liked this you'll like that too.
-Maz
i hope people have as much fun reading my posts as i do writing them. I have only mass quantities of bud light to thank for my sillyness. Did you read my other post in the "worst DIY project ever" thread? If you liked this you'll like that too.
-Maz
Yeah, I did a search and read the others.... pissed myself laughing. I didn't think Seppos* knew how to ****-take.....?
I thought it was an Aussie or Pommy thing.🙂
Pity George Dubya has no idea how to laugh at himself.
Oops! sorry, this is not a political forum!
🤐
*Seppo = Septic Tank = Yank.... in case you didn't know Strine.
🙂 Have a happy day
I thought it was an Aussie or Pommy thing.🙂
Pity George Dubya has no idea how to laugh at himself.
Oops! sorry, this is not a political forum!
🤐
*Seppo = Septic Tank = Yank.... in case you didn't know Strine.
🙂 Have a happy day
Agent Provocateur
Idle moments are the most amusing times at work. Man, if I could recall the countless practical jokes I've seen over the years...
About a year ago, one of the technicians was catching a catnap in a quiet corner outside the workshop. We had just finished lunch, when a moment of brilliance and ingenuity befell a friend: he smiled, looked about the shop, and we all knew that a practical joke was brewing.
He grabbed a compressed air line, a long one, about 30 feet, a roll of duct tape, and an empty coolant bottle. As the gang looked on in curiosity, chuckles began as each man put the contraption together in his mind, while the agent provocateur diligently assembled his device.
The napping tech was asleep, below a chain-link fenced area over which we had draped a canvas tarp for some comfortable shade. The "device" was lightly tossed atop the crude "roof", and as we all walked away a few yards, the other end of the air line was popped into a nearby air outlet...
I mulled over the design of this contraption, worried about flying debris, and ethylene glycol...but the bottle had been used to ferry water for some time, topping off vehicles, and the fence cage with canvas was good protection from the loose air line...
Well, so much for practicality. The resulting BOOM followed by scrambling, uncontrollably laughing men was priceless indeed.
Idle moments are the most amusing times at work. Man, if I could recall the countless practical jokes I've seen over the years...
About a year ago, one of the technicians was catching a catnap in a quiet corner outside the workshop. We had just finished lunch, when a moment of brilliance and ingenuity befell a friend: he smiled, looked about the shop, and we all knew that a practical joke was brewing.
He grabbed a compressed air line, a long one, about 30 feet, a roll of duct tape, and an empty coolant bottle. As the gang looked on in curiosity, chuckles began as each man put the contraption together in his mind, while the agent provocateur diligently assembled his device.
The napping tech was asleep, below a chain-link fenced area over which we had draped a canvas tarp for some comfortable shade. The "device" was lightly tossed atop the crude "roof", and as we all walked away a few yards, the other end of the air line was popped into a nearby air outlet...
I mulled over the design of this contraption, worried about flying debris, and ethylene glycol...but the bottle had been used to ferry water for some time, topping off vehicles, and the fence cage with canvas was good protection from the loose air line...
Well, so much for practicality. The resulting BOOM followed by scrambling, uncontrollably laughing men was priceless indeed.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.