Craig Sawyers

Kind of difficult, since Evans has massive clout withe the BBC - and do or die he is the new face of TG. Will he last in the long term? No idea, but I'd guess he will be around for at least a year.

If indeed they are dead (after you get them out) you need to find out what killed them. Post the schematic so we can have a look.

If you are measuring out of circuit (so there is no confusion with any other parts on the board) then they are dead. Gate to drain or source is diode-like. Depending on the JFET, drain to source will be tens to hundreds of ohms either way around with the gate open. Possibly a turn-on transient while the tube warms up has killed them? Without seeing the schematic it is kind of difficult to tell for sure.

Dunno if I posted this on the batteries. But when I built mine, I modelled the batteries in spice, with the following results: Batteries.pdf

Thanks for that Graeme - I laughed so much it is incomprehensible that he has gone. From the date-stamp 6 years ago - so he must have been 71 then, and looked nothing like it. And multiple Bowie mentions too....

The pic of Concorde reminded me of a guy called Norman Harry. Norman is the (now very elderly) father of an old workmate of mine, Alan Harry. Alan had mentioned that his dad was a great mechanical engineer, and 20 years ago or so I had a problem that it seemed Norman might be able to help with. This dapper little guy showed up, quietly spoken. After a coffee we exchanged business cards, and his said "Norman Harry OBE" - OBE is Order of the British Empire, and is a top honour awarded by the government in the Queen's New Year honors list. And it is bestowed in person by the Queen. It is a big deal. "Good heavens, Norman - I didn't realise you had an OBE. What did you get that for?" "Um, I designed the droop nose on Concorde" Back about that time, Norman was one of a very few people qualified to pilot WW2 airplanes. In particular the Lancaster bomber. He was called on to restore the rear gun system for a French owned one, and to make sure he got it right he crawled into the gun blister of a complete one to take photographs and take measurements. "When I got in there I recognised the gun gimbals and mechanical system, and realised that I had designed it in the first place. The next thought was to see the imperfect design - that of a young guy - and immediately started to think how it ought to be done with the benefit of experience. Then I had to stop - the French wanted the historically correct one, along with all my design mistakes!" Quite a character.

No-one in the US will likely have heard about this guy, but in the UK this is a major league loss - Terry Wogan http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-26957941

The blizzard that hit you East Coast guys made it across the pond, warming as it came. So at 12C it is hitting us as torrential rain and high winds. Yummy.

Fuses are fine for safety, but I usually find that the silicon blows before the fuse does.

^I made the awful mistake of pressing play

For a completely different project I have a couple of Chinese ones, via eBay. Two secondaries are rated at 17.5VA each - so 35VA total. Looking at the product datasheet for Kitamura, the physical dimesions (including fixing hole spacing etc), the Chinese one correspinds to Kitamura's 25VA, so the 35VA chinese rating looks a bit hopeful.

In a sense I'm kind of relieved that Minsky made it to 88; that is not a bad innings. Everyone else on the list in the last month hasn't made it out of their 50's or 60's.

All the best, Adrian - have a great one!

Have a great day, Mike!

Have a great one!

The map of the UK and South Ireland is so close to the truth. I come from Shirtless Men - they breed them tough where I was born. Mrs S comes from Hartlepool, where it says "Elected a Monkey". That is actually wrong - they hung a monkey. At the time of the Napoleonic war, the French fleet was running up the coast of England, and one of them was shipwrecked of the North East coast, and all the sailors were killed. The only thing that washed up on shore alive was the captain's monkey. It was the way of things that the monkey was dressed in a little suit of clothes. Of course the somewhat isolated community of Hartlepool (at that time) had never seen a monkey, and assumed it was a midget French spy. So they put it on trial, and since the monkey refused to say much they found it guilty by default and hung it. Until relatively recently if anyone wanted to provoke a fight, it only took "Hey lads - who hung the monkey?" Just noticed that it even got onto Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_hanger

Bloody hell. it just doesn't seem to stop. I though it was bad when Lemmy went in December - but it hasn't stopped since then. Saw Lemmy in Hawkwind at the Newcastle City Hall in 1972 when they played support band for Black Sabbath. Now THAT was a gig. Back in my denim, shoulder length hair head banging days. And still got my Eagles black vinyl on the shelf - that is going to get listened too again.

^That had me laughing along - there is nothing so infectious as the laughter of a small child!

That is hilarious. My sister-in-law and husband have lived in Copenhagen for many years, and have failed miserably to learn Danish. As soon as they try to say anything the other person switches to English.

Oh dear. Oops indeed.

^^^Oh yes! In a sequence which must have lasted only a few seconds, the range of facial expressions packed in one after the other is truly astonishing. What a loss. I forget which father and son actors I heard being interviewed on the radio a couple of years ago, but their technique was totally different. The son basically just turned up and acted in an uncomplicated way. But he was describing his father's attention to detail, and described one of his dad's notebooks which was full of descriptions of different ways of opening a door. The bookshelf was full of such notebooks. I suspect Rickman was a notebook sort of guy judging by that video.

Never heard of the leidenfrost effect until now, and had to look it up. Although it is clearly the correct name for when I could plunge my hand into a bucket of liquid nitrogen for half a second without ill effect.

Wine? Enhances high temperature superconductor performance too http://phys.org/news/2011-01-hot-booze-material-superconductor.html

Happy birthday to the Deacon!