Mamas and the Papas

[Chris]

I know it is a little off topic But!

Many years ago, Here in Abaco, Bahamas. I was visiting with some of friends on Elbow Cay (Hope Towns). They had a vacation house that was built buit by Burle Ives, Aunt Pat's Bay, for those that know the area. I know this dates me a bit. Any way they had a Lister, not a VA or 8/1, a 1800 rpm unit, we all had a generator of some sort. No Grid power around in those days. The generator would not start and we had to dismatle the fuel system. Linkages, every thing. Water, dirt, crud had gotten all up through it. Clean everything up, reassemble, and fired it up. We knew it was not running at the right speed, we knew, didn't sound right, but close. Our volt meter had dead batteries. No hertz meter. We were blind.How to get the volts/hertz right?

So this is what we did.
After getting the gen going, we felt pretty proud of our selves. We where only about 16 -18 years old.
Had a couple of Rum drinks, yeh we drink too much, nothing much else to do, we turned on the record player, remember those things? Put the Mama and Papas on the turn table. Turned it on and they sounded like sh&t. The record player was running too slow. SOO we had someone in the gen shed adjusting and another in the house listening, someone in between creaming, faster, slower. We got the Mamas and Pamps sounding spot on.

Chris

[john stoffel]

That's pretty cool. I remember using a stopwatch and an electric clock with a second hand and adjusting the frequency up or down until I got it to agree with the stopwatch. Who needs those fancy meters! A long time ago Voltmeters didn't have a frequency display. And if you didn't have a Voltmeter you could just use the "bright light method" kind of like yep that light looks bright enough for me! These youngsters don't know how good they have it nowadays.

[rcavictim]

That was quite clever there Chris. Just like a motor driven clock so is an old record player! Nowadays you'd be s.o.l. if all you have is an MP3 player.  You couldn't even use the lamp brightness test with a modern CFL.  Forget it!

You're not gonna admit that the idea came because the Lister had a hand crank and so did the old victrola.   

[Chris]

At first I thought I would post mamas and papas in controllers and regulators, but thought better of it. They are doing some fancy stuff there and thought they might take offense.

[Apogee]

Excellent!!!!

[dubbleUJay]

Chris, don't be so modest, look what you inspired:  in the "controllers" section as well!

http://www.microcogen.info/index.php?topic=393.0

Although it might not work, but it got us thinkin' 

[Chris]

Wow

Chris

[harv_44]

              What a great story!

                        Harv

[Wizard]

Keep a record player that has optical tone around it's rim, get this steady you get freq and RPM right.  This will give you much precise speed & Hz.

Cheers, Wizard