My First Build - 1965

T

Thomas in Niagara

Member
Yes... 1965. Keep in mind I'm a newb here but thought you builder doods would find this interesting.

Let me set this up for ya's,
The year 1965. At that time I was 12 years old and was flabbergasted by technology. So flabbergasted that if there was an electrical appliance in the house that no one used for about 40 minutes meant I had the God given right to remove all the exterior screws and dissect each and every analog circuit, vacuum tube, motor and wiring just to see how it went together and if I was real interested, how it actually worked. Well my sister had this record player and I just had to find out what the mystery was in that felt turning pad and swing arm. Oh the knobs just slid right off. The screws almost backed themselves out of the platter table. Underneath that... gloryoski! Stuff!!! Attached to the platter table was this heavy motor. It came out easy too and with a cord attached!!! When I plugged it in, it whirred to life spinning a shaft which turned the platter which spun the 45's and LPs. Well it wasn't going back together so I figured I would repurpose this heavy little motor into a helicopter. Using a nail, I popped a hole in my fathers favorite metal ruler. An aluminium thing 12 inches long. I also had a toggle switch that I added to the cord for an on/off switch.

The year 1965. I knelt on our basement floor with the toggle switch at the ready, prop settled down on the motor shaft [no nuts or fasteners for this kid that's why I was kneeling down below the airship on my fathers workbench]. I gave myself a silent countdown as I knelt there on the concrete floor, toggle ready. 3..2..1.. TOGGLE ON!!! Well you don't need to be clairvoyant to know what happened next. There was no lift off. The ruler spun like a crazy thing....... but I didn't notice. Someone had snuck up behind me and kicked me so hard in the armpit that I landed beside the furnace. I thought my dad had caught me pooching his ruler when in fact I had just been introduced to electrical current and completing a circuit. Well the ruler flew somewhere and I dimly remember it careening off the furnace ducting loud enough to bring my mom running.

The year 2015. I still can feel that kick to the armpit today. I still like to take things apart that I know I can't fix or put back together. I want to build my own quad but would still like to have someone else insert the batteries. And I still duck when my Syma X5C-1 takes flight.

Cheers and happy flying you Johnny come latelys... :p
 
Thomas in Niagara said:
Yes... 1965. Keep in mind I'm a newb here but thought you builder doods would find this interesting.

Let me set this up for ya's,
The year 1965. At that time I was 12 years old and was flabbergasted by technology. So flabbergasted that if there was an electrical appliance in the house that no one used for about 40 minutes meant I had the God given right to remove all the exterior screws and dissect each and every analog circuit, vacuum tube, motor and wiring just to see how it went together and if I was real interested, how it actually worked. Well my sister had this record player and I just had to find out what the mystery was in that felt turning pad and swing arm. Oh the knobs just slid right off. The screws almost backed themselves out of the platter table. Underneath that... gloryoski! Stuff!!! Attached to the platter table was this heavy motor. It came out easy too and with a cord attached!!! When I plugged it in, it whirred to life spinning a shaft which turned the platter which spun the 45's and LPs. Well it wasn't going back together so I figured I would repurpose this heavy little motor into a helicopter. Using a nail, I popped a hole in my fathers favorite metal ruler. An aluminium thing 12 inches long. I also had a toggle switch that I added to the cord for an on/off switch.

The year 1965. I knelt on our basement floor with the toggle switch at the ready, prop settled down on the motor shaft [no nuts or fasteners for this kid that's why I was kneeling down below the airship on my fathers workbench]. I gave myself a silent countdown as I knelt there on the concrete floor, toggle ready. 3..2..1.. TOGGLE ON!!! Well you don't need to be clairvoyant to know what happened next. There was no lift off. The ruler spun like a crazy thing....... but I didn't notice. Someone had snuck up behind me and kicked me so hard in the armpit that I landed beside the furnace. I thought my dad had caught me pooching his ruler when in fact I had just been introduced to electrical current and completing a circuit. Well the ruler flew somewhere and I dimly remember it careening off the furnace ducting loud enough to bring my mom running.

The year 2015. I still can feel that kick to the armpit today. I still like to take things apart that I know I can't fix or put back together. I want to build my own quad but would still like to have someone else insert the batteries. And I still duck when my Syma X5C-1 takes flight.

Cheers and happy flying you Johnny come latelys... :p
Click to expand...


HAHAHAHAHA, I am starting to think that this is how we all started off, got me laughing as I always took things apart that I should not have, and found out that TVs and CRT monitors are a force to be reckoned with hhahaha.
 
Thomas in Niagara said:
Yes... 1965. Keep in mind I'm a newb here but thought you builder doods would find this interesting.

Let me set this up for ya's,
The year 1965. At that time I was 12 years old and was flabbergasted by technology. So flabbergasted that if there was an electrical appliance in the house that no one used for about 40 minutes meant I had the God given right to remove all the exterior screws and dissect each and every analog circuit, vacuum tube, motor and wiring just to see how it went together and if I was real interested, how it actually worked. Well my sister had this record player and I just had to find out what the mystery was in that felt turning pad and swing arm. Oh the knobs just slid right off. The screws almost backed themselves out of the platter table. Underneath that... gloryoski! Stuff!!! Attached to the platter table was this heavy motor. It came out easy too and with a cord attached!!! When I plugged it in, it whirred to life spinning a shaft which turned the platter which spun the 45's and LPs. Well it wasn't going back together so I figured I would repurpose this heavy little motor into a helicopter. Using a nail, I popped a hole in my fathers favorite metal ruler. An aluminium thing 12 inches long. I also had a toggle switch that I added to the cord for an on/off switch.

The year 1965. I knelt on our basement floor with the toggle switch at the ready, prop settled down on the motor shaft [no nuts or fasteners for this kid that's why I was kneeling down below the airship on my fathers workbench]. I gave myself a silent countdown as I knelt there on the concrete floor, toggle ready. 3..2..1.. TOGGLE ON!!! Well you don't need to be clairvoyant to know what happened next. There was no lift off. The ruler spun like a crazy thing....... but I didn't notice. Someone had snuck up behind me and kicked me so hard in the armpit that I landed beside the furnace. I thought my dad had caught me pooching his ruler when in fact I had just been introduced to electrical current and completing a circuit. Well the ruler flew somewhere and I dimly remember it careening off the furnace ducting loud enough to bring my mom running.

The year 2015. I still can feel that kick to the armpit today. I still like to take things apart that I know I can't fix or put back together. I want to build my own quad but would still like to have someone else insert the batteries. And I still duck when my Syma X5C-1 takes flight.

Cheers and happy flying you Johnny come latelys... :p
Click to expand...

LOL. That is a great story Thomas. I had similar beginings. somewhere around 1958 or 59 I pulled the turntable off of my portable record player, but it had a different drive system. It used a rubber wheel that ran against the inside edge of the turntable.

Here is a little about myself that I posted in my personal information also.

about 5 weeks ago I was looking at buying a Multi rotor of some sort, so I started on The big online box store that will remain anonymous. I opened a can of worms when I did that! I selected the box Priced High to Low, and then started going down the list of what was available, and at what prices. I also read reviews about anything I am thinking of purchasing. It is something I have always done ever since I started shopping online back in 1997. Well I found I could do without this or without that pretty fast, just to get the price down to what I figured might not make the wife start yelling and kicking butt. LOL, she wouldn't really kick butt, but I would definately hear about it till she got senile if I were to go out and spend a couple hundred on what she would call a toy, or even a hobby. So I kept scrolling page by page by page. I spent most of the day doing that in maybe 30 minute increments. I would havbe to take a break from it for about 10 or 15 minutes in between. Anyway, I finally got down to around the $140 to $170 (usd) dollar range, and figured that is as low as I want to go for what I want out of a multirotor. Any lower in price and I was not going to get this or that. So at that point I started looking into the idea of building my own, as I have always been good at that sort of thing ever since I was a young boy of about 9 or 10. One day my dad brought this big wooden box which was divided up into a lot of smaller boxes, it was going to be used for the local Moose Lodge as their Bingo light board. My dad was a member there and they asked him if he could wire it for them, so he brought it home and walked into my bedroom and asked me if I wanted to wire it with all the different wires it would need so that the little light would come on when someone threw the switch for say (N43) I had a great time doing that, I soldered on it for several days. I was 11 years old at the time, the year was about 1962.
 
Swapping tales is a good thing! Thanks for sharing! I started out with this X5C-1. I think I've spent more on parts and accessories than the cost of the quad LOL! Great fun though and I'd recommend this model to anyone starting out.
 
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