Home Tube DIY Asylum

Do It Yourself (DIY) paradise for tube and SET project builders.

Let me tell you a story, Larry.

When I was a kid, I used to enjoy making things. For much of my early boyhood I was very interested in model airplanes. I was always working on one plane or another, and it was very frustrating to me that I didn't have the experience or skill to make them come out perfectly like the ones in the magazines. I used to dream about building perfect model airplanes.

When I got to be ten or eleven, I got interested in electronics. My mother enrolled me in a ham radio class at the JCC, and I got my Novice license when I was twelve. I had to work hard to learn the theory and rules, and especially, Morse code.

Around this time I got interested in stereos. My father had a Pioneer SX-828 receiver and the owners manual had the schematic in the back. My mother worked at a public television station and I got friendly with one of the technicians there. I showed him the Pioneer schematic and told him I wanted to build the power amp section. He said to me, "I have a better idea -- take a look at this," and he pulled a copy of Dan Meyers' 1969 "Radio Electronics" Universal Tiger article out of his file cabinet. A hundred twenty-five Watts per channel. My mind reeled.

I had built a few Heathkits up to that point, and had attempted some scratch projects from the ARRL Handbook and "Popular Electronics" with mixed success. The problem was, I could make PC boards and wire up a circuit, but I had no idea how the circuits worked. This bothered me a lot and I became obsessed with the idea of studying electrical engineering in college so I could learn how to design audio amplifiers.

So I got into Stanford and started taking the core EE curriculum sophomore year. I also read everything I could get my hands on about feedback and audio amplifier design. This was an extremely eye-opening experience for me because suddenly I had the design vocabulary, as it were, to understand and analyze circuits. I learned about circuits and also about signal processing and communication theory. And math, of course.

Naturally I also took art and literature and philosophy courses, which, on top of a pretty good high school education left me reasonably well-rounded, if not quite a Rhodes scholar.

My roommate for much of my college career was a mechanical engineer. There was a strong element of creative problem solving in his coursework and practical projects. He introduced me to motorcycling and I learned how to work on engines. After I graduated I owned a dozen bikes at various times, including several BMW flat twins that probably spent as much time in pieces as on the road.

I learned last year that my college friend was driving with his wife and kids in their RV up in a park in British Columbia when a tanker truck going the opposite way lost control and crossed into his lane. Robert and his family were incinerated. Easy come, easy go. I feel pretty bad about that. But I digress.

Another passion I developed early on was writing about technology. In high school I had a crush on a girl a year ahead of me. She went to Stanford (It's not a coincidence that I followed her there. We hardly spoke the entire time, though we're good friends now.) When I was a senior, I used to send her long, typewritten letters describing in great technical detail the projects I was working on. She tells me she enjoyed the letters and to this day is always asking me, "So, what are you writing?"

So, here's the thing. I place a very high value on learning and teaching. You may not know that I am the guy who coined the term "flywheel" to describe an important design feature of Jeff's supply. I was also, to the best of my knowledge, the first person to grasp the significance of the small input choke in the flywheel supply, to do extensive modeling of the circuit, and to explain in detail how it works. I have also built, tested, and measured a flywheel supply, confirming by direct observation the earlier predictions I had made.

I know from reading your comment above that you would prefer not to have to read through a page of explanation to learn something. Having read hundreds and hundreds of pages of textbooks, and having spent thousands of hours in classrooms and doing problem sets, I have to say that knowledge doesn't come cheap, but it's worth the cost. The problem is, it's a double-edged sword: the more you know, generally speaking, the more you realize how much you have left to learn. So, I'm not offended, but actually kind of amused to see you calling me closed-minded.

I've gone out of my way in my two longer posts this weekend to explain my response to Jeff carefully and in detail. I've also offered a whole bunch of useful, objective information that, if you were to make the effort to read and comprehend it, would actually teach you something.

In a sense, you have the best of both worlds here. You can hook up with guys like Jeff, copy their ideas and try them out for yourself. Or you can go to a forum like diyAudio where the population is much more tech-focused and, if you open your own mind and ask intelligent questions, you can potentially learn a hell of a lot more than Jeff could ever teach you.

It's really up to you.

I write for the pleasure of expressing myself. Jeff used to get under my skin, but in my old age I am learning to let go of things I can't control. As someone I highly respect said to me just the other day, on a completely different topic, "You know what you know, and other people know what they know. What you need to do is decide what's important to you. If it suits your purposes to associate with these people, then accept that you can't change them and focus on making the best of it. If you find it's not worth your while to stay with these people, then go somewhere else that better meets your needs."

I think you can see from our respective postings that Jeff and I have very different approaches to solving problems. I do think of myself as being a smidge broader thinker than Jeff, but heaven forbid I should appear to be bragging. I guess it's obvious from the sheer volume of writing I've done that I'm nothing but a self-possessed, arrogant sonofabitch. LOL!

Have a nice rest of your weekend.

-Henry


This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  Kimber Kable  


Follow Ups Full Thread
Follow Ups

FAQ

Post a Message!

Forgot Password?
Moniker (Username):
Password (Optional):
  Remember my Moniker & Password  (What's this?)    Eat Me
E-Mail (Optional):
Subject:
Message:   (Posts are subject to Content Rules)
Optional Link URL:
Optional Link Title:
Optional Image URL:
Upload Image:
E-mail Replies:  Automagically notify you when someone responds.