I remember those fuses Kakadumh. We called them 'rat trap fuses' and they were pricks of things to reload with new fuses.
The maintenance guys were used to them but installers would often bumble around with long nose pliers. I often wondered if they could flick
a tiny bit of shrapnel at you when they popped.

The end beads were colour-coded. I still have a few crossbar fuses in tiny envelopes kicking around as part of my memorabilia/museum pieces.

Good commentary about fuses blowing in various degrees. I have seen blown 240V 2A fuses with a beautiful film of shiny metal deposited evenly against their inner glass wall. A mirror manufacturer would have been envious.

The best examples came from Kriesler CTV SMPS's. Those power supplies had no sense of humour when things went wrong on the mains side.

Conversely, when a fuse had two bits of sagging wire trying to reach each other you knew a new fuse would 'fix' the fault.

Those Krieslers were typical of all power supplies of that topology, not only in TVs. If the signal to the switching transistor gets interrupted at the wrong time, the transistor will instantly punch through C-E. A fuse is the only protection you have in this case.

Tougher switching transistors and mosfets with more forgiving ratings have improved things in the years since. The BU126 was a somewhat fragile device.

Much worse at the time were the imported Blaupunkt (Bosch KC chassis) that had one of the stupidest power supply designs I've ever seen. Live chassis and designed with a half-wave mains rectifier, to sell them in Australia meant they had to be modified to run full-wave. Problem with this was inrush current to the very large reservoir cap. So instead of reducing the size of the cap, a circuit was added to allow the set to start up in half wave, then switch to full wave.

When this misbehaved (as it did often) the result was exploding fuses, shorted bridge diodes and a handful of other components that needed to be replaced. You would wince as you switched one on, never knowing if you'd get the bang and the flash.

Brad the people in charge of those repeater huts were the same ones that told us the exchange upgrade we spent six months in Orange installing was actually supposed to be in Wagga lol. I think the lunatics were in charge of the asylum . We were actually months in advance. Talk about low morale when that happened.

I feared and hated Blaupunkts.

During an in-home repair I became pinned between the chassis and a brick fireplace. Don't quite remember how I escaped but found myself swearing loudly and heart beating like a hammer.

An educated guess, I think the resistance of the brickwork saved my life.

Ian, if the Germans can find a way to make something far more complex than it needs to be, they will implement it.

I admired AWA's use of Mitsubishi innards for its televisions in the early 1980s. Instead of the myriad of circuit boards and wiring looms found in European sets of the same era, AWA managed to put what they needed on one board the size of a 486 computer motherboard and only a handful of cables for the power, tuner, CRT and loudspeaker. They were a very simple and reliable design by comparison.

Some may argue that the fancy brands had more features but I disagree. What does one really need to view a watchable picture for more than 20 years, which is what most of those AWA and Thorn sets lasted for and many never saw time on a seriveman's bench. The quick answer is: as little as possible. There was therefore plenty of space inside those sets for heat dissipation.

The most reliable TV I ever had was a 26 inch Sanyo I bought in 1985, I even bought one for mum when dad passed away and neither set gave us a ounce of trouble till digital came in and mum simply used it as a base for the new digital set I bought her.
Having said that ! We now have a 70 inch Blaupunkt which does everything very easy to use!

Back to the topic:

Today I was grabbing some lunch at the shopping centre when a guy came up to me and says: "Would you like a free haircut?"

Me: "I definitely need a haircut but what's the catch? Where's the candid camera?"

Him: "No catch. I'm being appraised by TAFE for my barber's certificate and I need a head to cut right at the moment and the shop is empty."

Me: "Okay, let's go."

The guy is a mature age TAFE student. He told me that has owned 5 Boost Juice shops for about 20 years but was looking for a change and decided to become a barber.

There were two women from TAFE watching him work and making comments here and there. At the end I had to fill in an appraisal form and sign it. He did a professional job.

I was discussing with the women the sorry state of TAFE these days. They said they have a lot of students doing hairdressing and that almost every month they get a memo from head office about some change of practice or policy. I ventured that's because the lunatics are in charge of the asylum. They laughed.

I am by no means a hair stylist and doubt I could do the job properly. That said, I've been my own barber for around 30 years. It's easy when a crewcut is the order of the day and a pair of electric sheers is close by. My pair owes me a couple of grand in barber's fees. Unlike when I was a kid, I no longer get a handful of sweets when the job's done.

Slightly off topic but getting back to my comment to Brad about buying an extension cord from Bunnings, I was browsing around my local store today and came across something very interesting. In a large box were 25m heavy duty extension leads with clear moulded plug and socket. The attached label carried the tick certifying that the cables met Australian safety standards. However a closer look at the wiring inside the plug showed that the wire that was crimped to the earth pin was not striped yellow/green as required by the standard. Should I report this to someone?

Like GTC with his spam messages reported to the ACMA, it might not have much effect. There are too many laws which are enforced by too few people these days. A long time ago, for something to be decleared as meeting certain requirements had to undergo independent testing. Now, a manufacture just signs a certificate that states a product meets the necessary requirements and that becomes gospel until a disaster unfolds.

Relayautomatic: it seems regulation and responsibility is all over the place, however you could start with the ACCC (scroll down to Electrical):

https://www.productsafety.gov.au/about-us/who-regulates-what

Brad: since sending all of my spam/scam SMS messages to that ACMA number for about a week, I'm glad to report that the tsunami has stopped. Not sure if that's a case of cause and effect, or pure co-incidence, but I'm happy with the outcome.

.... "Like many who contribute to this forum, I went through the TAFE system." ... I took a different path, Uni and large Corporations. However ...

Close to retirement, about 20 years ago, I did some consultancy for a TAFE/Uni. They were hell bent on 'pathway .. ing' every student through TAFE subjects to a Degree course ... plumbers, welders, electricians ... everyone, every program. I was unsure whether the prime motivation was funding or ego. The TAFE section was a ghost town ... rows of empty welding booths, rows of unused lathes etc ... severely underfunded ... set up to fail.

No wonder we have a shortfall of 'local' TAFE skilled people ...

I don't understand how we have a technology led answer to climate change (or anything else) when the Unis get no support through the Covid crisis and there is a gutted Tafe system for the training of tradeys and technicians.

One good thing is that uni fees for STEM subjects have been decreased - but at the cost of increased arts type subjects, they can't be happy.

STC just look at who is in charge!
Fat idiots with no real life experience.
Check out our " I dont hold a hose" PM for EG.

We now have 2 generations that think everything is fixed by tapping on a keyboard.
We cant even pick fruit any more and have to wait until the o/s students arrive back?
What!... we dont have any jobless layabouts that can pick fruit? Fair dinkum.

Solution: cut the DOLE or "NEW" whatever you call it and tell the buggers to get on the bus providedby the army and drag their backsides out to the farms and start picking!! No work, no pay.
I dont think you need a university degree or a keyboard to do that.
I did plenty of S*I*TTY jobs jobs as a youth, it was that or starve..........

Thats the view of someone near 80, funny how you can see things more clearly with a bit of life experience isn't it?

EOR (end of rant).
Fred.

Fred: your rant reminds me of my late father -- a depression kid from a large family who had to leave school early and get any job he could find to bring in money to the home. He was always ranting about how we kids had it too good and didn't know what hard work was. He even railed about the length of school holidays. He had sayings like "Go easy with the butter; it doesn't grow on trees". And we knew never to mention the word politician in his presence.

We kids found it all hilarious. He died a cranky old man. From this distance I can understand what drove him.