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THE WAY I SEE IT By NEVILLE WILLIAMS Worth preserving: a colourful slice of electronic history! Talk to someone who worked in a radio factory during the '20s and '30s and you'll probably hear about makeshift working conditions, sudden standdowns, heavy-handed bosses and light-fingered staff. But much of it will be lost to future generations, unless some of us share those memories, before we 're too frail to push a pen or commit them to tape! We talked endlessly about situations and events when it was all happening, especially in the early '30s, comparing notes and swapping stories as we followed the jobs, at various levels, from one radio factory to the next - a real life game of musical stools! Some of the stories were apocryphal, I'm sure, based on fact but suitably embellished to improve the telling. Maybe the odd junior was the victim of not-so-innocent pranks by male and/or female process workers, but I doubt that they were quite as spectacular as sometimes claimed. Maybe, on their way out the back door, someone did once burst into the manager's office at Stromberg Carlson and call him everything under the sun but, in factory folklore, every red-blooded wirer who was ever sacked from the place was credited with having done the same thing! Continuity of work was a major problem, in those days, with the factories loaded to the limit in winter and reduced to a skeleton staff in summer. A lot of process workers in their late teens and ear70 SILICON CHIP ly twenties simply made the best of it but others, hoping for a career in radio, worked hard to becomf:l part of the "skeleton" that the management did their best to hang on to. Apart from lay-offs during- the summer months, sudden standdowns were very much part of the scene, especially in the larger factories. If production was threatened by a temporary shortage of key components, workers on the line were simply stood down for as many hours as it took to sort out the problem. Where the unions figured I'm not sure but they didn't seem to count for much in that situation. In case you think I'm exaggerating, let me quote from an article "Fifty Years of Broadcasting in Australia", from the IREE Golden Jubilee Publication (1932-82), written by that well known electronics engineer Neville Thiele. I quote: The receiver industry was lively and competitive, ruthless to its employees. Old hands used to tell of being laid off for hours at a time, waiting in a back lane behind the factory whenever components ran out, and being sacked just before Christmas, to be re-engaged after the new year. Production fluctuated with the seasons. If talk meant anything, the word "ruthless" accurately sums up the attitude of many employers, although the truth probably is that, in the cut-throat competition of the post-depression era, they were operating on margins about as fine as those of the people who worked for them. Tricks of the trade Loyalty, either way, was also pretty thin on the ground and ''pinching parts" was rife, plainly dishonest to some but accepted by others as anything from a challenge to a way of getting even with the boss. Keep in mind that, while they/we were spending all day building radios for other people, few could afford a radio of their own. Boarding alone in Sydney, all I could listen to at night was the wailing of cats under the house! Chatting about all this, recently, with retired engineer Winston Muscio, he recalled how wirers used to smuggle switches and other small parts through security at the STC factory in Alexandria, Sydney. Said he: "They'd knot them into a length of cord and walk out with them hung over the crutch in their pants!" I'd heard about the same technique at another factory except that it was used to pinch valves. Of course, that only worked because of the then current fad for loose-fitting trousers. "Oxford bags", I think they were called. But for sheer finesse, it's hard to beat the routine described to me by former colleague Phil Watson: At one time, as a goodwill gesture, management at the HMV factory at Homebush, NSW, where Phil once worked, agreed to an arr ang em en t whereby factory workers could borrow portable test instruments over the weekend for their own personal use. The scheme proved, however, to be a "Trojan Horse" in reverse, when somebody thought up the idea of taking the instruments out packed with loose components, and bringing them back empty! Power transformers were a problem because of their size and weight but the same resourceful workers managed to get them out by lobbing them from a window into the long grass on a nearby railway embankment. Fortunately, there was a positive side to all this. The factories did provide a way to meet expenses (just!) for those of us who had a genuine interest in radio and whose prime ambition was to get a foot on the ladder: assembler, wirer, inspector, tester, troubleshooter, laboratory assistant and perhaps, one day, engineer! Or, as they used to be (and still are) called: a "ginger beer". Men in white coats! Mind you, on the factory floor, engineers were often regarded as a rather odd breed. They kept pretty much to themselves, wore white dustcoats and worked in a locked room that no one else ever entered, except the top brass; they got more money than the rest of us, were never stood down and didn't have to punch the bundy. How one got to be an engineer wasn't clear. They didn't feature much in factory small talk, perhaps because they were seen as neuters neither workers nor bosses. But a chief engineer who doubled as a production manager was another matter; that put him squarely in the firing line! In retrospect, getting to be an engineer in the '20s and early '30s was not as mysterious a rite as many of us might then have believed. Mainly, it involved: An old AWA Radiola of about mid-1920s vintage. What was life like in a radio factory in the '20s and '30s? (Photo courtesy Orpheus Radio Museum, Ballarat). Having a good general knowledge of radio, however acquired; and (2). Being in the right place at the right time when the particular vacancy had to be filled. Thinking back over the technical pace setters up to and through the '20s, some had gained their knowledge as traditional radio amateurs, pursuing wireless/radio as a hobby and adding to their skills by contriving, building and using their own transmitters and receivers. Others had started out as ordinary hobbyists and, with or without back-up courses, had become sufficiently expert to build and service radio equipment privately, moving later into fullscale professional activities of one kind and another. And, of course, there were those who had trained as wireless operators, or as electrical technicians or engineers, who later broadened their technical skills to embrace the new field of radio. In Australia, at least, specially trained professional radio engineers only began to inherit the white coats from the mid to late '30s. (1). What about the details? It's not difficult to reminisce in a general way, because I lived through the period, but all that I've said could too easily be a one-eyed view. Yet I cannot remember ever having read another article recalling life in a radio factory in the '20s and '30s. For many, it may have been tough, tedious and highly forgettable but now, in this Bicentenary year, it's a human story worth the telling. Even so Stephen Rapley, currently producing the ABC Radio series "Talking History" is also finding it hard to dig out the details. I've mentioned StrombergCarlson, STC and HMV but there were others like AW A, Airzone and Breville that I didn't hear much about, plus component manufacturers like Radiokes, Henderson, Efco and ETC. There were factories in Melbourne, too - Eclipse, Rola, Astor, etc - and elsewhere interstate but, for all we knew of them in the Sydney workplace, they might as well have been a world away. I personally learned the ropes at Reliance Radio in Sydney, a small family company where, of necessity, management and staff worked side by side. But there must have been dozens of other small companies out there with stories and situations as varied as their names. Here's hoping that at least a few retired readers of SILICON CHIP will be able to resurrect information about some of those pioneer Australian radio and components factories - who they were, where they were, how large they were, FEBRUARY1988 71 Servicing - "I feel like closing the doors!" Dear Sir, I would like to add some comments to Neville Williams' "The way I see it", in your Nov.'87 issue. From first-hand observation, I can nominate a few reasons for repair delays: (1 ). Too many new models, with too many changes to internal components, for the sake of change. It is now just about impossible to stock all items for all models of all brands of even one product (eg. VCRs). In a lot of cases, this means ordering parts for each job - hence delays. (2). Products like CD players are not economical to repair when new ones can be bought for $1 99. Agreed, not all are as cheap as that but you try to justify a repair bill of $150 on any CD player, when the owner has seen a new one down the road for $49 dollars more! (3). Lack of properly qualified and experienced technicians prepared to work for comparatively low wages. (4). One major company no longer supplies even authorised agents direct. The parts have to be what they produced, and what they were like to work for. Clippings, photostats, anecdotes in letter form or on cassette could provide interesting reading and help fill in what is currently a pretty sparse outline. Electronic non-servicing To change the subject completely, a reader from of Cairns, Qld, a professional electronic serviceman, takes up my theme from the November issue: "They'll sell you anything - but don't ask them to fix it!" In drawing attention to the now almost routine 6-week turnaround time in getting electronic equipment repaired, I was conscious that my remarks might have been seen as unduly negative but, in essence, M.K. agrees: modern electronic servicing is very much a problem area. 72 SILICON CHIP ordered through a reseller who holds very little stock, resulting in a delay of at least six weeks. Crazy! Unaware of how high-tech modern products are, customers often hunt around for "bargain" repairs by backyard operators offering free service calls, weekend service, etc, but with little access to manuals or assistance from manufacturers, and very few spare parts. Too frequently, reputable repairers have to sort out somebody else's mess and cop the abuse for the added cost and delay. Service calls are a thing of the past. A mobile repairman cannot possibly remember every.model or even carry enough manuals - let alone parts. Customers want a service call but are reluctant to pay for it. We offer a pick-up and delivery service for larger sets for $20 (both ways) which nowhere near covers the cost, but customers argue that even this is too high. Quotes are another tricky area because, to give an "honest" quote, the item must be repaired. If the customer doesn't accept the quote, who pays for the time spent. I'll bet they don't work for His letter is reproduced in an accompanying panel. If you haven't read it already, read it now, and come back to the following brief comments: • There usually is a legitimate reason for changing components. Whether it's sufficient to justify creating yet another service problem is something else. • The notion that a repair must somehow be scaled to the cheapest possible replacement unit is emotive but none the less real. • Qualified technicians used to work for very low wages, but that was fifty years ago! • Price quotes and ''backyarders" have this much in common: they are both unpredictable! • If the purchase price is already too low to adequately cover a year's "free" service, I'd be even more in- free, but try explaining that. Warranty service (including calls) will continue to cause problems while ever new items are so inexpensive. How can anyone expect a free home call on a TV set costing $420 retail? At such a ridiculous price, they are lucky it has any warranty at all. Many of our customers, seeking warranty repairs, become abusive. They seem to forget that we didn't sell it to them in the first place and that we are here to help. As much as I hate to suggest it, I feel that electronic repairs will soon be a thing of the past, as new items become progressively cheaper and more hi-tech. Customers may have to accept that electronic goods will simply have to be replaced when they stop working, whether they be one week or ten years old. Personally, I often feel like closing the doors and letting customers fend for themselves so rarely do they seem to appreciate the job we do for them. It can't get much worse, so it might just get better! Mike Kalinowski , Cairns Electronics. trigued to know how several years' extra warranty can be obtained by paying a relatively small surcharge. • A modern-day nonsense: the ultimate in design is to produce something that doesn't need fixing but, if it does, you can't! From a "backyarder"? Another reader, this time from Western Australia, comments about servicing problems and says that he falls into the category described by my third option, which he defines as: Ask a mate who knows something about electronics and see if they can fix it. What I actually said in the November article (see page 14, second column) was: " ... or, failing that, an individual on-the-spot repairman that other consumers are prepared to recommend on the basis of experience''. Whether he The ultimate in design is to produce something that doesn't need fixing hut, if it does, you can't! fits what I said or what he merely thinks I said is anybody's guess. If he is just "a mate who knows something a bout electronics", it's perhaps as well that he lives as far as he does from our Cairns correspondent! Be that as it may, his first anecdote (abbreviated) runs like this: A friend asked me to look at his rather expensive cassette radio, which ceased to talk after he accidentally reversed the polarity, when plugging it into his car cigarette lighter. He took it into the company service centre for the particular make but, when they heard what had happened, they suggested that he would be better advised to buy a new one. So he passed it over to me. I found that the two audio ICs were blown, plus a couple of diodes, and while there may have been other problems, I estimated the cost at around $20. However, when the service centre discovered that I was not a service agent, they quoted me $25 each for replacement ICs. After picking myself off the floor, I called in to a local electronics store, where I bought the required ICs for just $4.00 each. I can only assume that the $25 figure was outright extortion, in an attempt to force abandonment of the project and the purchase of another unit. Without knowing the value and condition of the particular receiver, it is difficult to judge whether the fixed cost of a formal service job, plus the uncertain cost of repair and parts from their replacement stock, would have represented money well spent. A point to consider is whether the overheads on stocking obligatory replacement components for one-off docketed sales are higher than for casual sales, although the difference between $25 to $4 does take a bit of swallowing! I note, however, that the correspondent makes no mention of any charge other than the cost of parts, implanting in the reader's mind an all-up figure of $10-odd, against maybe $70-80 had the work been done in the service centre. But what would the correspondent have had to charge if, as a professional serviceman, dependent on the work for his living, he had included all the costs and overheads that must be taken into account. This must be done if a serviceman is not going to end up "broke". Anecdote number two concerned a CD player from a different manufacturer, purchased by the same friend. Nine months after purchase, it began to skip tracks erratically or refuse to load discs altogether. The local service centre for that brand insisted that the problem was in the discs - even though they behaved normally in another player. The argument dragged on until the warranty expired, at which time the service centre said that the owner would now have to pay for any further service calls. I quote: Learning of this, he phoned Consumer Affairs, who informed him that, because no parts were replaced during the warranty period, the period would only run the normal time. The owner had little option but to try to have the player repaired at his own expense. This time around, the service centre identified the problem as a defective laser sensor, the cost of replacement being such that he would be well advised simply to buy a new player! That's how it, too, ended up at his mate's place. Missing assembly screws and wiring ties provided evidence enough that it had been messed about with but the indications were that the diagnosis was correct. So to the question: why was it that the problem was only identified after the time had passed when the supplier was obligated to repair the unit gratis or replace it with a new one? The correspondent's conclusion: It appears to me that certain companies are deliberately relaxing their repair services to oblige customers to buy a new unit. When I expressed misgivings, in the November issue, about what seemed to be happening in the service industry, I was concerned that I might be painting the picture in too dark a shade of grey. Looking back over those two letters, from readers on different sides of the continent, and different sides of the servicing scene, they've re-worked the picture in black! As I see it, the advice which rounded off that first article, makes better sense than ever: When selecting a piece of new electronic equipment, don't just look at the price, appearance and specifications. Satisfy yourself that, if something does go wrong, proper provision exists to have it fixed. That's the way I see it! lb FEBRUARY1988 73