Anybody have early jobs in electronics?

[Motorola minion]

Fortunate to live next to a machine shop owned by Mom's family, I had access to many cool places I could not be without an adult around. They always needed something electrical looked into and I got livid if I missed the opportunity to watch something electrical being done. I was teh electronics consult on everything even though I just cleaned bathrooms and emptied trash. Junior year, I worked at a dragstrip picking up trash as I honed my electronics skills by visiting an older vendor who sold radios, saving all his $2 specials for yours truly, taking them home only to find two caps were needed for a repair. When I began to drive as a senior, it became even more important to seek out the wisdom, so I drove to jobs my parents discouraged.

My employers were one-man-shop TV repairmen who were OLDER than my parents and Army- educated veterans (WWII, Korea)whom I learned much from even before finishing high school and vo-tech. By my senior year, I had a bench/delivery job for a dealer one block from school, enjoying the tech-savvy sarcasm and banter with the oldest one there, the owner who took on their RCA franchise in '49. I lived 8 miles away from job/school, so my 73 Fury was also a delivery vehicle for trade-in treasures but gas was already up to $1.25. I saved money from my personal customer jobs which included rooftop antenna work my folks were not aware of.

Needless to say, learning about cars was only from others my age, adults were not very helpful or accommodating at all. Every time a motorhead from school, usually older than us "kids" wiped themselves out on one of the many treacherous backroads, WE got a full lecture even wanting a tame but respectable car like a 283 Impala, 301 Skylark, 302 Mustang, 304 Javelin or 318 Challenger. I was coerced into getting a full-size car due to such concerns
The late 70s was an awful time to like performance considering all forces against you, so if you were interested in a car, any car, the only support you got was from your peers.

Sorry about going a bit off-topic but I still regret the paranoid and hopeless times we began driving in. Back then, I never thought it would get better but it did

[William]

My earliest job in/with electronics was when I started working at the Gamble Store when I was 14. Our store sold the Gamble brand Coronado, as well as Satchell-Carlson. I sold and delivered TV's, record players, stereos, and even any manner of radios. When time allowed I would watch our in house repair guy fix things. He had all the equipment for testing and as much as I would ask him to teach me, we just never seemed to find the time. Not sure if that was deliberate or not. Back in those days customers would bring in tubes from their electronic stuff and ask to have them tested. If I was there, that was my job. I would test and if a found a bad tube I sold them a new one. Eventually I graduated from tube tester to service guy. I would take the tube tester to a home, test the tubes, replace as necessary, and clean tuner. If that did not fix it, I would bring the set in for repairs. I had fun, actually working at the Gamble store was the best job I ever had. Good people to work for, and all the employees got along, and something different everyday. Maybe that is just the kid in me remember what the good ole' days were like.

Bill

[19&41]

It might not seem early to some of you, but my first job I had after being laid off from the military industrial complex and moving nearer my folks in Michigan was in a small 2-way radio shop that catered primarily to local government entities (police, fire, ambulance,rescue ) A lot of my work was in pager repair and service work on handheld and mobile radio equipment. It was '50s era mobiles up to the latest crystal controlled mobiles and tone actuated alert monitors. I did that for 5 years, before the owner decided to call it quits. I think most of the equipment I worked on was completely obsolete 2 years after that. The fire pagers and alert monitors went off on receiving 2 to 3 sequential tones that were detected on tuning forks that had piezoelectric crystal slabs on the tines. A signal was applied to one tine, if it resonated, the other tine would pass a signal and go to trip the audio. The transceivers had tone operated squelch that would turn on the audio if the sending station had the proper sub audible tone during transmission. The mobiles had larger tuning forks detecting that. It seems like a century ago.

[William]

Boy, Rex, you job was way over my head. If I live to be 100 I will never get anywhere near what you were talking about.

Bill

[Motorola minion]

Boy, Rex, you job was way over my head. If I live to be 100 I will never get anywhere near what you were talking about.

Bill

That sounds like Rex worked on some very specialized equipment but I do recall hearing about the "tones" , even within the last 20 years, so how interesting to hear the physics behind that!
I think going past the analog era makes any job in electronics a drudge process these days.

The county dispatch centers in many PA counties has had trouble making the switch to UHF digital communications from VHF high analog. Lots of money was spent, then spent again to fix issues. I am so very fortunate I got into electrical engineering and not continue in electronics.

[19&41]

That tone system, trade named "private line", was about the state of the art 50 years ago. The changeover to digital is rightfully difficult and fraught with problems until all services are operating with it. The transit authority I work for made the switch in 2004. to simply explain it, we have 16 operating frequencies in our system. Each organizations "channel" has digital identification signals that instantaneously transmits in the audio when the push to talk (PTT) switch is pressed. That identifies that radio's "personality" so that any radio in the system set to that "channel" hears and sees who is transmitting. The network of repeater stations also identify that "personality" and passes it on throughout that system. When a person transmits, the radio automatically will select any one of the 16 frequencies that no other radio is using at that moment. then it is received by a repeater station, and simultaneously retransmitted over another radio on site and put on land line to the other repeater stations for rebroadcast. All the received signal the person's radio gets comes from repeater stations, all the transmitted signal from the person goes to the repeater. The "channel " selected directs the transmission throughout the system and only to the radios on that "channel" If this seems confusing to you, just imagine the basis for this system was drawn up and patented during WWII by Hedy Lamarr and the composer George Antheil.