Відео

Hydrogen and mercury thyratrons, door knob HV capacitors, 18" long xenon flash tubes, x-ray power supply, Spelman HV supplies, 3 meter FM pirate radio exciters, RF amplifiers, homemade transmission line filters, obscure Industrial and Gothic CDs, Classical and Jazz CDs, S&M and black leather toys all lost to storage warriors like pearls before swine.

I don't know if I should be angry at you or make you my favorite utoob channel.

Yeah I could buy it online if I had a credit card and a paypal account. There are no brick and mortar shops in South Eastern Michigan.

I tried to change with the times. Too many things changed. Too many investors tried to rip me off instead of investing in marketing my idea. I had banana boxes with all kinds of parts that I got at pennies on the dollar. Plates, rods and tubes of aluminum and steel, resistors, capacitors, series trigger transformers, lasers, RF amplifiers, KT88 tube audio amplifiers... All liquidated. I can never recoup what I had. I used to repurpose things and solve people's problems. Some people called me a hoarder but I had the parts on hand to build the project at 3 AM even if I didn't have the money. I also usually gave away the finished product so I was not a hoarder. You need real estate to store all of this stuff. When you become homeless, a lot of people come around to "help" you. They have ideas on how they can haul away all of your stuff to the metal recyclers after they have picked through it. Thieves, tweakers, recyclers and landlords, they are all vultures. Let's scrub the land of all of the old cars up on cinder blocks. Let's make everything pretty and sterile. Let's all support capitalism and buy it instead of making it. I know that I sound like an old man shouting at the clouds. It might be my own damn fault for not rolling with the changes but I have untreated ADHD and have too many coping mechanisms. I'm also pretty naive and let too many people take advantage of me. Thanx for listening. I've vented enough for now.

I used to work at and buy from a surplus company in California called Halted (started by Hal and Ted. You could buy discreet components as well as surface mount by cutting them off of a reel. I owned a stereo zoom microscope and a hot air pencil. After a while Radio Shack closed, so did Halted, so did Weird Stuff. You could buy stuff mail order but you needed a credit card and a paypal account. I got old. I moved back to Michigan and got COVID, went into a coma and almost woke up dead. Things have changed. I was at ground zero and didn't realize it. I lost my collection of parts to storage locker laws and storage war mentality. I would love to continue to invent and make but have lost my spark, not to mention my ability to walk.

Meh, kids today don't have hobbies. They just want to make Tiktoks or become a programmer, coding some stupid flappy bird phone app. Honestly, SMD is not as big of a hindrance as this video makes it seem. Then again, I started out using surface mount so I'm biased. Through hole on a bread board is still convenient and still accessible. People have just lost interest. They're too busy with the shiny new thing, the "iPhone 98S plus max" or whatever it is now.

I would say it is better than ever. I can have any component or tool I want for dirt cheap from AliExpress. Devboards, toolchains, MCUs are all available to the public for peanuts. $5 protoytype boards, 3D printers. I don't long after the days of Radio Shack catalogs AT ALL.

12 mins of my life watching this, I LOVED IT ! BIG Thumbs up !

Repairing electronics or creating our own equipment is difficult to rationalize when we can buy something ready made from China for less than our cost of components. Hobbyists may have limited access to brick and mortar electronic stores which might have been sources of inspiration for previous generations BUT they do have unlimited access via the internet - both for incredibly cheap components and incredible on-line tutorials. I must admit that I rarely create circuits from scratch any more, it is TOO EASY to just meld "modules" together to produce a workable tool or appliance. The introduction of dirt cheap micro-controllers and micro-computers has allowed using me to successfully complete projects that would have required an extensive knowledge of electronics to produce prior to their existence. And now there is AI, things are happening too fast for comfort. We might be on the verge of developing technology as dangerous as the nuclear bomb.

Mike Osborne late VK3ZCZ much missed. A splendid lecturer at CIT, devotee of car rallying and all-round lovely bloke.

Mike Osborne late VK3ZCZ much missed. A splendid lecturer at CIT, devotee of car rallying and all-round lovely bloke.

Yes, electronics as a hobby has had it's best time a few years ago. In my home town there was one shop that sold electronics parts, when the shops had to stay closed for the Chinese Flu, many shops did not survive. Now the electronics parts shop is gone. I think this is very sad, I loved to go there and listen to the latest jokes, and he tried then to order the rare parts I needed. Ordering in China is not the same, sometimes you do not get what you paid for. Sometimes the parts are fake, sometimes there is wrong information, sometimes used parts are sold as new.

Much of the decline is due to the fact that software development as a hobby has exploded over the past forty years, and the two hobbies appeal to the same sort of person.

no place to get parts radio shacks big mistake

Interesting video. My electronics interest as a kid became my career that served me well, yet my kids do not want to know, most children do not want to try to understand the world around them, just the latest fad on Social media. Education has failed to inspire, and the western governments have disowned electronics, except for their military, that is so controlled by Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean capability, the USA is now desperate to restore the balance for FABs outside of China and the amazing Taiwan tech.

for me I thought when less people play this electronics field then it's more easy to success. If only big player left. it's mean they move slowly than small business. like this example. ua-cam.com/video/StHvADwO8sY/v-deo.html

It is practically impossible today to make amateur electronic circuits due to the increasingly smaller size of the components and their replacement by complex chips.

i disagree. thanks to chinese online shop is easy to source cheap components

People are involved with drones, networking (software), building PCs, vehicle electronics, micro-controllers and their software (small board computers like Arduino) and building custom electronics - it's all changed.

All the electronic shops in my town closed down in the ( u.k.) in the late 1980's. I think youngsters prefer playing solely on there p.c. or smart phone. The only people i know into electronics nowadays are people in their 80's. I used to work for an electronics firm and around the middle of the 80's it became a throwaway society & my skills of fault finding went out the window.

Yep, Funway 1 and 2 is where it all started for me, and I still have both the books. It was 1986, grade 5 in primary school. Now 48, I'm still building the occasional Jaycar and Altronics kit as a hobby, amongst repairing all sorts of electronics, electrical and mechanical stuff in my day to day work. Thanks Dick🙏👍🇦🇺

Here in the states the electronics hobby died decades ago.

Here in England I can’t think of any electronic shops that sell components. I buy all my components from car boots and auto jumbles. Or I just de solder them from old junk. 😅

Very Accurate history of AWA. Miss that company and staff. The training was second to none, even learned to spray paint. Must catch up.

I joined AWA in 1973 the year prior to Ian. I was very surprised when this came across my feed. I left in 1982 when turbulence was making itself felt and left under not so great circumstance's. Ian has summarised the AWA experience down to a tee. I kept in touch with him and sold him some audio gear some years later. It would be interesting to touch base with ian if anyone knows where he can be contacted as i have lost touch from a lot of people back then. I was 18 when i joined, have just turned 68 and now retired. Would be great to see you again Ian. Regards John Finn

Globalization was an economic trick invented by bankers to rob the west of it's wealth. Then they filled us with various types of guilt propaganda so that we'd shut up and not complain.

I feel this. People ask me why I make devices I can just go out and buy, but they dont understand that I do for the experience and for the fun.

I would say the success of the Arduino and Raspberry Pi ecosystems has brought it back to some extent. I dug out all the hobby electronics from my childhood around 2017, mixing microcontrollers with classical logic ICs.

Bonza!

absolute aussie legend, personally I preferred him over Dick Smith. many thanks from NZ

The public should interact with analog electronic detectors and sensors without an interface so new physical phenomenon can be discovered.

We will end up losing the know-how of anything tech related on the very broad social level, of course 0.001% of people will be involved in bulding some cutting edge quantum ICs in picometer scale, but most people won't even know what a capacitor is or how to setup your own server, this will be a very depressing feature, people will be constantly 'stuck' because of lack of knowledge or waiting for tech support to solve the issue for them...

Is there a way I can contact Colin Mitchell? I would really like to speak with him if there’s a chance.

I've read all of the comments. Interesting views. In my humble opinion I think one should pursue whatever brings you enjoyment. The field of electronics is always changing and always will. Nothing wrong with through hole components or smt or programming an arduino etc.Key word in the video HOBBY electronics. Have fun and learn something, that's the ticket. It all has to be better than sitting around watching sitcoms. Peace

I've got a background in Electronics that started off when I was 13 years old, my dad and stepmum bought me a Funway Into Electronics set for Christmas and I learnt a lot about electronics from it, I'm 54 years old now.

I read that the Sydney fab closed in 2021 due to the compulsory acquisition of the land for metro rail construction. I understand that there is a new facility in Browns Plains which is a suburb in Brisbane.

Don't blink at 1:14 or you might miss the female. . . . 🙍‍♀

20 years ago I too knew that the function of electronic repairers was going to disappear. because you should know that robotization in industry had allowed overproduction and a drop in prices. all manufacturers are now introducing planned obsolescence. All products have become single-use again like tissues. but things will change and the feedback from repairers is visible in the field of smartphones. because a smartphone has become too expensive again and often suffers breakages..an 800 dollar iPhone no one dares to throw it away.. then the introduction of switching power supplies is very fragile because of urban power supply. there are two niches that will bring DIY enthusiasts back to electronics. the smartphone and the switching power supply 😊🇩🇿🇩🇿

I was in the video:)

My parents bought my 16 year old brother a Microbee personal computer in 1985. He sold his first code the next year and was written up in a computer magazine. Today, he is 54 and a computer programmer/systems analyst for the Australian Stock Exchange. His first born son, who is 29 now, followed in his shoes and works for Qantas Airways.

Analog and power electronics are still more interesting to me

The first computer I purchased in 1982 was the Microbee. It cost a fortune. I learnt a lot about software from that point on. Thanks to Owen Hill for having a go at starting a PC industry in Aus. It’s a pity we could not keep it going.

Luv'd me Dick Smith's kits!

If Owen was in Silicon Valley around this time he’d be lauded alongside Wozniak, etc.

Australian computer royalty.

I worked in Owens first factory in Hornsby then his showroom in Waitara. Such a nice guy, he still sounds the same as I remember him.

Does anyone know why this guy is in Jail now ?

Ahh, Jaycar, the home of outrageous prices!

The electronics hobby has the same problems as many other hobbies - -the kids and culture have changed. Kids are far too interested in screen time and not much interested in anything else. These are the GOLDEN days for hobbyists thanks to cheap electronics and 3D printing, but show me a kid who is building a model plane or model railroad or even model rockets...it ain't happening.

Soldering SMDs is bothering them? WHAT XD? Pliers, and magnyfying glass is the actual obstacle? For real? For whom? 80yr olds? Hobby electronics today looks vastly different, and possibilities are limited only by your wallet tbh. It's never been easier to get into the business with an actual experience. KiCAD that opens the door as hell, because it's actually being used in the professional industry - and you can learn it at home, do some desgins, order with its project files physical PCBs, and have BOM to get elements. It's never been better than today! An amateur is capable, to do something serious in months of being into the subject! Times are beautiful imho, its full of opportunities. It's the matter whether you want to bend over, and grab one, or you are to lazy and see to many obstacles.