The tower at Shore has some history to it for a couple of reasons.

It doesn't look like it these days but it was once a part of Bernard Holtermann's mansion, paid for with a chunk of his record weight gold specimen dug up at Hill End. From that tower he used the world's biggest glass plate negatives to take panoramic photos of Sydney's skyline all those years ago. Holtermann also spent some time as Mayor of North Sydney.

The second is that it is regularly hit by lightning. Whilst I was working there, the motherboard in the fire alarm panel had to be replaced a couple of times. That mansion is now one of the school's boarding houses. There was once a huge pine tree next to the building which was blown apart by lightning.

The video system in place back then was a bit of a masterpiece as the picture was just as good close to the control room in the Library as it was from the furthest point from there. The bloke who controlled it all had a bank of VCRs which he could switch in the content.

Even though it is pretty high up from sea level, one would think that all the neighbouring skyscrapers would take the hit. When I worked at Gladesville Hospital in the early 1990s there was an area there which was lightning-pprone due there being an ironstone reef underneath. Maybe there is something similar at Shore and the neighbouring Graythwaite Estate (which Shore now owns) also has.

Harold, I learnt about the Amplidyne system at tech but never saw one in real life.

There was the Selsyn system as well for aligning antennas remotely.
I had one of those in my shop at one time but cannot remember much about it!
There was a control panel with a big knob turning a multiphase rotor- north- south- east- west in degrees.
That hooked to a similar motor unit to drive the antenna and a sensor position thing.
I think something was broken like a coil wire in the Master sender unit.
I just fixed it and the guy picked it up and never saw it again.

Dave, yeh print it off you never know something in it may strike a chord with someone.
The biggest trouble I had with college and uni classes was how tutors went on and on and on and on about a subject until everybody's eyes glazed over.
All I ever wanted was the guts of something, I could figure the rest of it out while working on equipment.
Having a genius level IQ may help but remember I really did not speak or read until I was 8 or 9 and so was in the dumb classes at school!!

I am working on an expanded article on AVR's and in it will explain a bit of how and why I used various circuits.
I am having to piece it together from scraps of paper, workshop journals and my failing memory.
Luckily, I kept some hardware like test or protype AVR's and junk pushed under benches or in boxes.

I am reading notes and work in my written hand, obviously my work, but I have no memory of doing soI
better do this stuff before my memory goes completely!

Fred.

The biggest trouble I had with college and uni classes was how tutors went on and on and on and on about a subject until everybody's eyes glazed over.
All I ever wanted was the guts of something...

I think my troubles with being in classrooms were similar. I never really liked being at school and only went because my mates also went to school and there was the lunch hour to look forward to. When I left school I was contemplating the three years of tech I would have to endure if I wanted to become the electrician I always wanted to be. Mind you, jobs were scarce at the time and I tried out for things ranging from an instrument fitter to a bank teller - both roles not exactly as in high demand as they once were. Whilst going through the motions of obtaining employment I completed the pre-apprenticeship course, which covered year one of electrical and electronics trades, so that opened up another avenue, but again, an electronics tradesman's role is hard to find now, outside the military and research sectors.

'an electronics tradesman's role is hard to find now, outside the military and research sectors'

I have a nephew working in the airline as an electronics technician though the role is being outsourced overseas for scheduled maintenance and he does mainly day to day troubleshooting to keep planes on time. During the covid shut down he went off somewhere fixing power tools.