Craig Sawyers

I've replied to Doug in a PM. But a good friend Paddy Glenny started up a brewery locally in Witney Oxfordshire, initially called The Glenny Brewery. He sold out to Wychwoods (his most famous brew, Hobgoblin is still brewed), maybe 20 years ago and went off to Nelson in BC Canada - setting up another brewery called the Nelson Brewery in 1991. Their most famous beer is Paddywhack. Last time I saw Paddy, he was doubling up as a Park Ranger paint ball coding Grizzlies. I kid you not. This is done (apparently) to keep track of the population. It is not a low-risk activity. Last time I heard from him, he had been attacked by a juvenile black bear and walked 20 miles out leaving a trail of blood. He survived to tell the tale. He didn't survive the next encounter, and became a Grizzly statistic. So Doug - go into brewing - it is a fine profession - but don't go in for colour coding Grizzlies.

Just RE-ordered the 4171G from Future. Except this time I've ordered 200 of the suckers - having spotted the voltage weakness around the bolt hole I have no intention of running out of them soon.

I do beg your pardon - I'm talking out my ass. Subbuteo is completely different to table football. I should know - despite a life long hatred of the football/soccer I have in an alcoholic fug played both games. Badly.

The picture of the hawk reminded me of a story. I don't know if you have a table football(soccer) game in the US - but it is basically a table with a series of rods that control the players, and two of you face off and have a game of table soccer. The guy that designed it tried to call it "Football Hobby" - bear in mind that this was introduced in 1947 - to find that someone had already trademarked the name. So instead he called it Subbuteo, because Sub Buteo is the latin name of the Hobby Hawk.

Well, that is not a bad idea. So I've filled out the form, to be assessed by a "sales associate". Lets see....

I've just been flailing around trying to avoid using the 4171G ceramic insulators, since they aren't expected in to the various stockists until the end of July (nominally). I've been talking to Kevin privately thoughout this as I reasoned things through. The result of that flailing just resulted in my spending a bit of money and stocking up the spares drawers. The short conclusion is: THERE IS NO OPTION BUT TO USE THE 4171G! I tried to use the Bergquist elastomer "alumina and beryllia replacement" with 6kV breakdown, type K10. I sourced insulating bushes with 2.54mm bush length so they went into the heatsink bracket and insulated the screw. Then I spotted the fallacy - there is still a breakdown path from the inside edge of the device mounting hole to the hole through the heatsink bracket - which is just the thickness of the washer away (0.15mm). That limits the potential to 0.15 x 3kV = 450V best case (air breaks down at 3kV/mm). Since the device tabs run up to 630V above ground this is a recipe for disaster. The nonsense is of course that Bergquist supply a TO220 bolt mounting stamping out of this material, which makes a joke out of its 6kV material specification. The alumina washers that Kevin ended up specifying are 1.78mm thick, separating the device tab and heatsink by that amount. That should hold off 1.78 x 3kV = over 5kV!

Awsome - could do with some of that scenery nearby. Nothing that big in the UK - the biggest hill is Ben Nevis at 4300 feet. I did some thing more boring - leg 1 of the Ridgeway Relay. This is an 89 mile trail run in 10 legs of varying milage. Nominally 11.2 hilly miles for my leg, 'cept I got lost at around 8 miles and faffed slowly around for 2 extra miles finding out where the hell I was. Then had to put the afterburners on once I found the route to claw back a bit of time. So totally knackered, and ended up last on my leg in a crappy time I'm not going to admit to. The truly tough event is a trail race along the whole length called the Ridgeway Challenge. Won last year an a massive new record of 12h30m - working out at an average pace of 8m40s per mile. The guy looks like he has been out for a three mile trot and not an 89 mile trail run Picasa Web Albums - alan - Ridgeway Chal...

That Dusty is a real bummer. Hope you're wrong, and it works out OK.

Tube sockets arrived today. Really crappily packed - wrapped in bubble wrap, but stuffed in an ordinary large brown envelope with a string wrap seal. Envelope was disintegrating, so it could have arrived empty with the sockets somewhere between here and Hong Kong (from DIY HiFi Supply). The good news is that they thoughtfully put a customs declared value of $50 (and not $152) on, so it slipped though the radar and attracted to tax. So hats off to them for that. Nice to get one over on our tax police. The other good news is that shipping from HK to UK was only $7.

You know, I never thought of that - but they for sure would get all the toilet humour and out and out rudeness straight off. Sort of like a medieval Roald Dahl in a really rude mood.

Yeah - Gargantua is pretty tough going. It is a long time since I read it, and never tried Bakhtin's book on Rabelais - maybe I ought to re-read it and then follow it up with Bakhtin. When next I feel in the mood for a little light reading

Congratulations! Let us know what they sound like! And I so understand the sneaking past the wife syndrome; although she is used to it now. Maggies, Martin Logans, Podiums and Quad 57's have all been the subject of "What ON EARTH are those!" over 20-odd years.

There is bugger all on UK TV at the moment - it is saturation, wall to wall football/soccer, all channels. The whole schedule is stuffed for anyone who could care less about the sport.

It's a rich part of European language culture, which we shoud embrace, celebrate and frequently use. Try dipping into Chaucer, or Rabelais' "Gargantua" (where whole chapters are devoted to foul and offensive insults) for fine exceptionally rude literature from 14th - 16th centuries.

Awesome Kevin! Mention of the platinum reminds me of my Dad, who ended his working life in charge of Quality at Burgess Microswitches. For some years the spring loaded rubber swing doors to the factory were propped open with a hefty spool of metal ribbon - 30-40lbs or so. No-one gave it much thought - must be steel - and so just pushed it into place each morning. My Dad eventually took a chunk and sent it off for assay just to find out what it was. Yup - platinum. Today's price is around

That is just not fun at all - hope the antibiotics clear things up pronto.

Thanks Beefy and Pars - that supplier is a must-keep supplier - an interesting line card. I shudda checked the schematic on this one - as KG points out they are just power supply decouplers and don't need a significant AC capability. Which means that I can source EPCOS B32653A104J ex stock from Farnell. Should arrive tomorrow. Stuffing beckons! Incidentally, Mouser are pretty impressive in my book. Order was packed and shipped on Monday stateside and arrived on my doorstep in the UK today, Wednesday. Shipping from the US - free on orders over

I have have boxes full of parts to start board stuffing, using my fusion of Kevins parts list (with exceptionally helpful Mouser parts numbers) and my restructured version. So far so great - with two problems. The first is the ceramic insulators, mentioned above. The second is the Wima MKP10 0.1uF 1kV polypropylenes, of which 8 are used on the amplifier and 2 on the power supply. I alas had a brain fade and bought 27.5mm pin spacings, and the board is laid out for 22.5mm spacing. Wima actually made several versions of each cap with different spacing. That is not a disaster - apart from the fact that the 22.5mm version is as rare as chicken teeth - Mouser are on an October delivery. Problem is that very few that I have found seem to stock this, and the MKP10 seems to be unique in its ability to withstand AC - 600V rms. There are plenty pulse polypropylenes that will physically fit, that handle 250V or 350V ac (Vishay, Epcos/Philips etc), but not the 600V rms of the MKP10. So I guess there are two questions: 1. Anybody know of stock somewhere? Tried Mouser, Digikey, Future, Farnell, RS Components and Google. 2. How critical is the 600V ac rating? My guess is this is quite important, but KG's comment would be very welcome....

Kevin pointed me at Future Electronics as a source for the Aavid 4171G ceramic TO220 insulators - at the time they had 9000 of the suckers. Since then they have run out (as have Digikey), with delivery estimated at the end of July. Does anyone have any alternative sources? I've come up dry, apart from a company that wants 90c each (ten times Future's price - remember that 62 are needed!).

I know for certain that I'd lose that bet in the first few hours

Restored by the guy who is selling them, with a 2 year warranty, I'd say that is not too bad a price. He seems to get excellent feedback on AudiogoN. Cruising around his site (Quads Unlimited) he seems to charge $2300 to restore an ESL57 that you supply, or $3500 if he procures and restores. On that scale, $2600 for the restored ESL63 is a reasonable enough deal. For comparison, the cheapest source that I know is One Thing Audio, and they charge UKP1190 to restore a pair that you supply - so say $1800 plus the purchase cost of the original speakers (plus shipping both ways to the UK, tax etc). Usually for non-UK work the recommend that you take the light weight panels out and just send those, but you need to be confident of your mechanical and electrical skills to disassemble and reassemble. Of course, these AudiogoN pair might be dogs in some way - so your risk of course;) Check with him what work, if any, he has done on the power supply, and what the visual appearance is - has he recovered them for example, and what is the condition of the wood caps. What colour is the cover and wood, and is the pair well visually matched?. Are the serial numbers sequential, and how old was the pair. Also does he have a photo gallery of the restoration of this particular pair. What packaging and shipment carrier does he use, and what happens if they arrive busted thrugh some ape man in the carrier using a bill hook.

Check

Ah - all this talk of little ones! Makes me remember it all so well - and to say enjoy every last minute, because they grow up and become adults with a speed that will take your breath away. My "little one" Lizzie has just phoned from Uganda, where she is doing some voluntary work building schools and wells etc, to tell me she just got her degree results - a 2:1. Those in the UK will understand that terminology. For those not, it is only a few marks short of the highest classification possible. Needless to say, we're all wondering what to do with ourselves, like dogs with two tails, and Lizzie is absolutely delighted! So a pretty great day!

They are good - and I've used them before for odd things like bifilar transformer wire. I already looked at their site before going the eBay route, but they don't do colours. I could of course have used ident sleeves to keep track... The eBay guy says that these are Thermax wires, 19 strand, 22AWG with 1.24mm OD. The Thermax Mil-spec site has this construction and OD listed as "medium wall", and has a voltage rating of 600V, For comparison, the Thermax "heavy wall" has a voltage rating of 1000V. So it looks as if I will be OK with the stuff I've ordered.

Looking for sources of wire for connecting up the T2, making umbilicals etc. I checked the eBay seller that Kevin (I believe) used, and they explicity don't export - ex military they say, hence export restrictions. However, a bit of detective work comes up with eBay seller www.johnswireshop.com , which links directly to the eBay shop. Gets a good write-up with UK audio folks for silver plated copper, Teflon covered multistrand wires, and has enough colours and guages to do the wiring without problems. General price is about four bucks for 25 feet. I'll let you know when it arrives, and what it looks like.