Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[med6753]

@Cerebus,
I think you are burying your head in the sand and pretending everything is OK. The High Courts have already ruled that there are illegal events that have been carried out by those that are supposed to be our representatives and set the standards for behaviour, and I can tell you here and now that the circus is not over yet. By not calling it out, you are condoning such behaviour, and there is no need for chapter and verse expanding great detail because that is then going beyond "Venting" which by your own admission is acceptable,

The place for all that is somewhere else, not here. Accusing me of 'condoning' some behaviour when just asking that we keep off politics in here is most definitely stepping over the line. You have no idea of what I've been doing for years to try to keep the jackboot variety of politicians off your back. You do not know my views on the matters in hand because I largely keep them to myself here because here would be an inappropriate place to vent them.  If you want to vent your political views whatever they may be go and do it somewhere else and don't start smearing the character of those who ask you to do so.

but I don't think naming anyone as in your examples is acceptable, full stop.

Now you're being silly, picking the two most prominent opposing figures in British politics (for balance) and assigning arbitrary examples is clearly reasonable. If it bothers you read "Noddy" and "Big Ears" instead of the names which are for all intents and purposes arbitrary.

You see what happens when we talk politics and why I go ape shit on certain individuals when they insist on using this thread as their personal soap box? The place is turning into a fucking cesspool and now we have other individuals pissed at one another.

I got a PM last night of another regular contributor who has had enough and will no longer post on topic content in this thread. Why? Because it gets lost in the multiple posts of moronic bullshit that seems to have taken over. I for one refuse to give up but I'm not gonna shut up either and I'm going to continue to call it as I see it. This is a TEA thread. Yes, we can wander off topic a bit. But when it becomes all that this thread seems to be lately that's way too much. 

[Specmaster]

Actually the primary cause of the driver shortage is covid, not Brexit. There is indeed a shortage of perhaps 100k drivers, and it's also a fact that most of the drivers that have quit are British.
There is a huge backlog of HGV tests, 40k or so, due to covid absences.


I challenge anyone to prove flooding the UK with cheap labour from eastern Europe is a good thing for anyone other than the middle classes. The supermarkets and other big companies have been using this to suppress wages for decades now. That's fine for people that can send the au-pair to buy their avocados at Waitrose, but it royally fucks over every worker who can be replaced with someone from the EU for half the wage.
And it also fucks over the countries that these people come from, because it leaves them with a labour shortage, raising wages locally in an economy that can't support them. And who pays the bill for that? Taxpayers in the rest of Europe, mainly Germany and France now that we've left.

I'm sorry you feel it's a massive burden to have to get a visa to fly off to parts of mainland Europe for a holiday twice a year, but frankly I'm more concerned with being able to heat, clothe, and eat, which is the position of far too many working people in this country.

Farmers can't get workers to pick their fruit and veg? Pay a decent fucking living wage then. Supermarkets can't get drivers? The same statement applies.

Joining the EU was a Tory plan in the 1970s to increase profits for big business. It worked. The window dressing of free movement was always a canard to buy the co-operation of the middle classes, and that worked too.

It's about time we started paying the real price for food and goods, instead of having them subsidised by cheap labour from poorer countries.

The only disagreement you'll get from me is the main cause of the situation, yes Covid has not helped, but Covid did not only affect the UK, it is/was global but I really do not see the same problems occurring anywhere else on the globe.

Arguably, the seeds were sown in the 70's as you pointed out, likewise I don't disagree with you about paying a decent living wage, I have seen it up close and personal about labour from eastern Europe being employed at vastly reduced rates in order to increase the business owners own personal wealth etc, so I do share your feelings on that point as well. As for flying off on holidays, I have never in my life taken holidays abroad, I always holiday at home and by home I mean my house, I've never had the financial freedom to do anything else, because my wages have been held down and possibly by the cause you highlighted, eastern Europeans willing to work for less has a massive knock effect on others as well. 

[med6753]

And I put my money where my mouth is. TEA content. Got an SOS call last night for some waveform data on a Type 454 that they are trying to fix. So I pulled the 212 off a bench 1 and set up my Type 454 with wave forms on the Type 503.

[Cerebus]

I loved Betty Boothroyd's characterisation of his predecessor: "A dithering leader of Her Majesty's opposition whose only consistency is evasion." 

I met Betty Boothroyd once. She was drafted in to chair/moderate an open session at a meeting I was at that included civil libertarians, members of Parliament, members of the House of Lords, the Cabinet Office, academics, police, Home Office personnel and other interested parties on the subject of RIPA (the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000). It was the kind of thing that could have become a fist fight in 20 seconds flat if allowed to get out of hand and she managed to keep the whole thing civilised and rule the whole thing with a rod of iron while still being charming and grandmotherly.

It was the kind of thing that was punctuated with coffee breaks and light refreshments. Betty was one of the people I got to chat with during one of the breaks and I couldn't have formed a more favourable impression, despite the fact that we disagreed on some of the issues at stake. When the meeting ended a lot of people went off for a meal together and the more robust of us averred and went off for a drink down the pub instead. I ended up getting drunk as a judge with a member of the House of Lords. 

[Specmaster]

And now back to normal programming, please, oh and just for the record, I'm not pissed at anybody, I respect people's view points and thats what makes this entire forum so vibrant and at the top of the list, we are not that stuffy here, unlike certain other forums were any off topics are banned, they are just dieing on their feet as they do not reflect real life at all. I challenge anyone to convince me that when they go or went into work be it office or whatever that they only talk about work topics. 

[mnementh]

This popped up in my feed from one of my other Discords.  Just a nice lazy Illegal FPV afternoon out in the middle of nowhere, over a public road where the worst you have to worry aboot is accidentally going down in a cow plop causing a car crash and getting locked up for manslaughter. 

mnem
 

FTFY

Which you can also say aboot any one of the aircraft that has been your livelihood over the years. Or any of the gliders tggzzz flies. Or any kid with a fucking kite. Or even a spooked cow.

mnem
 

Yes, very true, but Robert is I think correct, and as far as I'm aware that the flying of drones in such places ie, near and across roads, airports, even built up areas and many other locations, is illegal in the UK.

Correct,
It's illegal to fly within 50 meters of a person or vehicle in the UK. There are exemptions when the person or object is under the control of the operator. There is some relief for sub 250g drones but there are still rules and despite the adverts and "specifications" there are few high perfomance drones that can actually meet the weight limit when fully equipped and carrying a camera.  Flying near livestock is also a big no-no. As a farmer can shoot a dog worrying livestock, I'm sure thay would not get prosecuted for shooting down a drone.

*goes back and looks again*

Yeah; you're right. Even judging against a typical GoPro's FOV, that guy couldn't have been at more than 20m altitude when he crossed over the road. Dumbass. 

Sorry; I was looking at that vid through the lens of prior experience in the US, not current in the UK. mea culpa. I didn't realize this was in the UK; for some reason, I was thinking NZ. Maybe because I was discussing Bruce Simpson the other day... under any circumstances, I don't know the current regulations in either, so moot point.

As for the US, at least when I was flying, I'm pretty that model aviation usage would have been considered normal for public lands. Most of the folks I flew FPV with were insured, as was I. The acro FPVers were among those pushing hardest in the community for people to get their AMA memberships and to actually go to model airfields, get some training and learn to fly responsibly instead of just showing up in gaggles at random locations. That stupidity, and the utterly idiotic pushback against very obviously necessary regulation of the hobby, are the main reason I drifted away from it.

As for flying over highways: almost every registered model airfield I ever flew at had at least one public road in its registered flight radius; roads are not in and of themselves automatically a no fly zone for the purpose of model aviation.

There are literally hundreds of models of acro quads now under the 2 sticks rule (2 sticks of butter/250g) WITH both FPV and flight cams. Those also have a much lower mandatory flight ceiling, so I would expect to see them flying at these low altitudes, tho not over a highway.

Since the 2 sticks rule most of the Phantom morons are gone, thank Ifni. While it is still a hobby in its infancy, this stuff is getting better and better regulated every day; and when I say better, I mean for both those who enjoy model aviation and innocent passers-by.

It's sad that the day of dad and son casually flying 1-2m planks in the park are gone. But really, model aviation has been one of those activities that just kept getting overlooked by the authorities (at least, over here) for far too long; the "self-regulating volunteer organization" that was the primary authority agency just wasn't doing the job anymore...

That fact is part of why I'm thinking of getting back into it; there are a lot of half-decent Acro Bind-&-Fly models out there, the FCs and FW are actually both getting "commodity product stable", and now that there are some actual concrete rules keeping the mail-order turnkey fuckwits out, it might be fun again.

mnem

[McBryce]

This popped up in my feed from one of my other Discords.  Just a nice lazy Illegal FPV afternoon out in the middle of nowhere, over a public road where the worst you have to worry aboot is accidentally going down in a cow plop causing a car crash and getting locked up for manslaughter. 

mnem
 

FTFY

Which you can also say aboot any one of the aircraft that has been your livelihood over the years. Or any of the gliders tggzzz flies. Or any kid with a fucking kite. Or even a spooked cow.

mnem
 

Except you can't take a cow to court for being spooked and running into traffic. You can take drone operator to court and make him pay for the shit he has caused.

McBryce.

[Cerebus]

I didn't realize this was in the UK

With a name like Minchinhampton? Could it be anywhere else? When the Americans, Canadians, Aussies and Kiwis eschewed imagination and named everywhere after somewhere in Blighty, sometimes putting 'new' in front of it, they did have the good sense to leave names like Minchinhampton behind. 

[tggzzz]

This popped up in my feed from one of my other Discords.  Just a nice lazy Illegal FPV afternoon out in the middle of nowhere, over a public road where the worst you have to worry aboot is accidentally going down in a cow plop causing a car crash and getting locked up for manslaughter. 

mnem
 

FTFY

Which you can also say aboot any one of the aircraft that has been your livelihood over the years. Or any of the gliders tggzzz flies. Or any kid with a fucking kite. Or even a spooked cow.

It would be illegal for an aircraft (powered or unpowered) to fly that low, except in an emergency. Even apart from that, Robert is right.

Now it happens I know Minch Common very well, and have flown over it many times. More relevantly it is on the route to where I flew (and is equidistant between two gliding clubs).

The cows there are exceptionally docile, except if you get between a mother and its calf, or a lone cow suddenly realises the rest of its herd has disappeared. When I saw the latter happen, it suddenly ran along the road, then zig-zagged between two cars waiting at a junction, hooves skittering in all directions.

Most of the time the cows amble slowly across roads, or are content to lie on the road and chew the cud, leaving cars to navigate around them. This is normal there:

[Specmaster]

I didn't realize this was in the UK

With a name like Minchinhampton? Could it be anywhere else? When the Americans, Canadians, Aussies and Kiwis eschewed imagination and named everywhere after somewhere in Blighty, sometimes putting 'new' in front of it, they did have the good sense to leave names like Minchinhampton behind. 

Nope, its 100% British, link follows.
https://www.cotswolds.com/plan-your-trip/towns-and-villages/minchinhampton-p847433

[tggzzz]

Getting started on the man dwagon cave. First on the agenda: actually attaching my soundbar to the monitor, as I originally intended when I bought that monster VESA mount years ago...

I would have thought the first item would be to get that desk off the wall and ceiling.

[Cerebus]

I didn't realize this was in the UK

With a name like Minchinhampton? Could it be anywhere else? When the Americans, Canadians, Aussies and Kiwis eschewed imagination and named everywhere after somewhere in Blighty, sometimes putting 'new' in front of it, they did have the good sense to leave names like Minchinhampton behind. 

Nope, its 100% British, link follows.
https://www.cotswolds.com/plan-your-trip/towns-and-villages/minchinhampton-p847433

Care to read that again and then change that from "Nope" to "Yep"?

[Cerebus]

Getting started on the man dwagon cave. First on the agenda: actually attaching my soundbar to the monitor, as I originally intended when I bought that monster VESA mount years ago...

I would have thought the first item would be to get that desk off the wall and ceiling.

When you've got wings and claws conventional placement is less of a priority.

[Specmaster]

I didn't realize this was in the UK

With a name like Minchinhampton? Could it be anywhere else? When the Americans, Canadians, Aussies and Kiwis eschewed imagination and named everywhere after somewhere in Blighty, sometimes putting 'new' in front of it, they did have the good sense to leave names like Minchinhampton behind. 

Nope, its 100% British, link follows.
https://www.cotswolds.com/plan-your-trip/towns-and-villages/minchinhampton-p847433

Care to read that again and then change that from "Nope" to "Yep"?

Yep, OK my bad, this time I read it as, It could be anywhere else 

[mnementh]

My dad and my son and I have discovered a shared passion... old-school pulp comic books. Mostly from the era that had the Schwarzenegger body-building ads in the back... 

Ha! The proper pulp era comics had Charles Atlas ads in the back, not that Johnny-come-lately Austrian.

We all enjoy the whole thing... the horrible litho printing, ...

It wasn't litho, that might have actually had some print quality, it was a crude form of flexography which was more akin to lino printing without the subtlety. The quality of the flexo process that they printed those with, except on the rare occasions that the printer had a good day, made potato printing look good. Modern flexo is capable of excellent results, look at any crisp/chip packet or cereal packet to see some, but back in the day this is what you got:

Yeah, well, we all know you're older than dirt; figures your favorite pulp would be too.

I'm not quite that old... yet. If it's any consolation, most of my childhgood favorite SciFi is from the "Golden Age"; I was weaned on a steady diet of Heinlein, Bradbury, Asimov and Le Guin to name but a very few. My first actual "book-book" was Runaway Robot by Lester Del Rey; bought on a random whim out of the 25c book bushel in front of a bookstore on some outing...

mnem
If only our governments were "3 Laws Safe!"...

[tggzzz]

if one flies a glider one needs a pilots license and is similarly governed by those rules and regulations.

While covered by the ANO, it is not necessary to have a licence for gliding. However, you do have to be a member of a gliding club, and that club's CFI has to have given you permission to fly.

That's because of an interesting battle back in the late 40s and early 50s over who would have control of what's in the air: the British Gliding Association (and its member clubs) or the Civil Aviation Authority. To cut a very long story short, because the CAA didn't want to police and enforce regulations about gliders (and nobody else did), they gave control of gliders to the BGA. Now the BGA is full of extremely competent people from all walks of life, who are well able to present arguments and understand technology, physiology and aviation, so overall it has worked out very well.

That typical British compromise did, however, cause some problems at EASA, who really didn't like/understand regulations being made and enforced by amateurs

[tggzzz]

I didn't realize this was in the UK

With a name like Minchinhampton? Could it be anywhere else? When the Americans, Canadians, Aussies and Kiwis eschewed imagination and named everywhere after somewhere in Blighty, sometimes putting 'new' in front of it, they did have the good sense to leave names like Minchinhampton behind. 

Or the village/hamlet of Nempnett Thrubwell, for that matter.

Looks like you can even buy it, on fleabay naturally.

[Specmaster]

Has anyone got a decent copy of the service manual for a Thurlby DSA511 at all that I could request a copy of? I have found many on the internet for the DSA511 & DSA524 but they are of such poor quality that the information contained within is often totally unreadable and I'm having trouble identifying points on the circuit boards to the actual schematic as a result.

The circuits don't offer much assistance either as they are totally devoid of any printing with the parts circuit reference on them.

[Vince]

Many of those drivers [...] were stuck in the queues at many of lorry parks such as the one at Manston Airport, the photo below was taken in December 2020 which saw many of the EU drivers stuck in similar lorry parks away from home over the New Year celebrations.

Oh...wow.... uh.... hmmm... Houston we have a problem !!!! 

Wait, what, are you telling me that none of this was reported in the media over there then? We had lorry parks popping up all over the place, including along the M20 in Kent, in fact at one time lorries needed a special Kent Passport to even be in Kent and carried severe penalties if anyone was foolish enough to be driving a lorry in Kent with such documentation 

https://trans.info/en/kent-access-permit-all-you-need-to-know-203800

Well I don't remember that at all indeed.

ISTR when Brexit came into effect everybody was fully expecting lorries to pile up due to increased admin paper work. So sure enough, I remember TV showing a few lorries queuing on some road near the tunel, but I don't remember seeing a dedicated car lorry park, never mind with SO many vehicles occupying it ! 

Now, truth be told... I don't watch TV that much, so might WELL have escaped me ! 

I have never had a TV of my own... I last watched it at my parents house at X-mas 1997, I remember vividly I then said to myself "come on this is brain damaging, go do ANYthing else, it's gotta be better than watching this crap ! ".
In the recent years I started cheating : with cheap broadband internet, I started watching a little bit of TV... just the evening news at 8PM, and just the first 5 or 10 minutes as past that they just fill with whatever useless content they can come up with. However for the entirety of 2018 I had zero internet access, then after that, up until now, so almost 2 years, have a crappy 4G modem + the web site of the TV station I am using to watch their news live stream... is a piece of shit. So overall the connection keeps dropping every 2 minutes and takes to minutes to reload (that includes 10 attempts at reloading the page), then a minute or two later it drops again, etc. Sometime SI try to use the "playback" feature but it's hardly better as it also takes a minute to load and then once you get there, 90% of the time pictures and sound are completely out of sync so you reload again, waste a minute or two again... hoping this time the two would be in sync.... sometimes they are, sometimes not.... so.... yeah, even when I think of watching the news, I usually end up having watch 2 minutes worth of news, and rarely more than 30 seconds of consecutive stuff....

So yeah, maybe they showed us these giant lorry parks and I just missed it the day they decided to show them... it is extremely possible .... 

[Cerebus]

I didn't realize this was in the UK

With a name like Minchinhampton? Could it be anywhere else? When the Americans, Canadians, Aussies and Kiwis eschewed imagination and named everywhere after somewhere in Blighty, sometimes putting 'new' in front of it, they did have the good sense to leave names like Minchinhampton behind. 

Or the village/hamlet of Nempnett Thrubwell, for that matter.

Looks like you can even buy it, on fleabay naturally.

My personal favourite is "Peover Superior" simply because it collapsed my Auntie in breathless laughter when we saw a road sign to it on holiday, and the rest of the holiday was punctuated by her making lavatorial jokes, which pleased the young boy that I was at the time no end.

[Specmaster]

@Vince
Yep, I tend to be just like you, watch very little TV, getting most of my information from the web and by attending the occasional talk by experts in their own fields. Politicians and the media I have learnt over the years always have hidden agendas and so speak with forked tongues.

[Neper]

My personal favourite is "Peover Superior"

Now, that would have been a news item for Charlotte Green. 

[mansaxel]

That fact is part of why I'm thinking of getting back into it; there are a lot of half-decent Acro Bind-&-Fly models out there, the FCs and FW are actually both getting "commodity product stable", and now that there are some actual concrete rules keeping the mail-order turnkey fuckwits out, it might be fun again.

I mostly get airsick from watching.

Anyway, I haven't had a need to go beyond the 27 for measurements all day.

Early this morning me and the Middle Boy did some testing of the channel selection footswitch jack on his new guitar amp. The manufacturer states that the official footswitch has "Phantom powered LED, 6,3mm (1/4”) mono jack, latching." which is another word for that the 15V (or so, I only measured it with a 3200 count meter ffs!) DC open circuit voltage that is present when the switch is open harnesses a current capacity enough to light up a red LED. If tip and shell on the phone jack are shorted there's a few mA flowing, so current limiting is obviously in place. 

Since the LED is not actually placed so as to not be influenced by or not to influence the operation of the switch, I take issue with the notion that it's "Phantom powered". A more proper (FSVO, this is only a GPIO circuit!) description would be "Tonaderspeisung" where the DC current is superimposed on the signal in a way that biases the entire circuit.

[Neomys Sapiens]

>>> Non-contact voltage testers and field probes <<<

Here is a small assortment of devices intented for non-contact voltage and/or current indication.
There are some missing, in addition to those I have a fluke VoltAlert and a Pyramid Amprobe one that is a copy of the testboy minus the LED light. Also several devices aimed purely at magnetic fields including static fields, like the Obel Typ688 or the Testboy 120 will follow later.

The white tester in the lower row is the oldest, it is at least 20 years in my posession. The Metrawatt is the most elaborately built one, but my results using it were  mixed. The Testboy is very reliable and useful, but gives an on-off indication only.
The red and ocre ones are from Israel. The tiny Fluke VoltLight LVD-1 could theoretically be clipped onto a test probe, providing live circuit warning as well as some lighting, but it is currently in my daypack as an EDC device because of it's small size.

The SFT-1 is aimed at identifying EMC problem sources and does maybe not really belong here.

The yellow Amprobe (Kwik-I-E Model K) and the green Extech (DVA30) are the most versatile devices pictured. Both have a capacitive and an inductive sensor for voltage rspectively current. The Extech operates with adjustable sensitivity, whereas the Amprobe has LED bar displays for both. I like the Amprobe Kwik-I-E most, but the Testboy is the most often used.

Maybe I should run some comparative tests on them. The SFT must of course be tested against the Elektor 'Tapir' and/or the 'EMV-Spion', but more of them later..

[McBryce]

Many of those drivers [...] were stuck in the queues at many of lorry parks such as the one at Manston Airport, the photo below was taken in December 2020 which saw many of the EU drivers stuck in similar lorry parks away from home over the New Year celebrations.

Oh...wow.... uh.... hmmm... Houston we have a problem !!!! 

Wait, what, are you telling me that none of this was reported in the media over there then? We had lorry parks popping up all over the place, including along the M20 in Kent, in fact at one time lorries needed a special Kent Passport to even be in Kent and carried severe penalties if anyone was foolish enough to be driving a lorry in Kent with such documentation 

https://trans.info/en/kent-access-permit-all-you-need-to-know-203800

Well I don't remember that at all indeed.

ISTR when Brexit came into effect everybody was fully expecting lorries to pile up due to increased admin paper work. So sure enough, I remember TV showing a few lorries queuing on some road near the tunel, but I don't remember seeing a dedicated car lorry park, never mind with SO many vehicles occupying it ! 

Now, truth be told... I don't watch TV that much, so might WELL have escaped me ! 

I have never had a TV of my own... I last watched it at my parents house at X-mas 1997, I remember vividly I then said to myself "come on this is brain damaging, go do ANYthing else, it's gotta be better than watching this crap ! ".
In the recent years I started cheating : with cheap broadband internet, I started watching a little bit of TV... just the evening news at 8PM, and just the first 5 or 10 minutes as past that they just fill with whatever useless content they can come up with. However for the entirety of 2018 I had zero internet access, then after that, up until now, so almost 2 years, have a crappy 4G modem + the web site of the TV station I am using to watch their news live stream... is a piece of shit. So overall the connection keeps dropping every 2 minutes and takes to minutes to reload (that includes 10 attempts at reloading the page), then a minute or two later it drops again, etc. Sometime SI try to use the "playback" feature but it's hardly better as it also takes a minute to load and then once you get there, 90% of the time pictures and sound are completely out of sync so you reload again, waste a minute or two again... hoping this time the two would be in sync.... sometimes they are, sometimes not.... so.... yeah, even when I think of watching the news, I usually end up having watch 2 minutes worth of news, and rarely more than 30 seconds of consecutive stuff....

So yeah, maybe they showed us these giant lorry parks and I just missed it the day they decided to show them... it is extremely possible .... 

Having often watched French TV I can fully understand that you chose not to own a TV. I'd have done the same.

McBryce.