Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cmcl2!nrl-cmf!ames!ucbcad!ucbvax!cbosgd!mandrill!neoucom!wtm From: wtm@neoucom.UUCP (Bill Mayhew) Newsgroups: sci.electronics,rec.humor Subject: Re: Jamming walkmans Message-ID: <780@neoucom.UUCP> Date: Sun, 29-Nov-87 00:39:22 EST Article-I.D.: neoucom.780 Posted: Sun Nov 29 00:39:22 1987 Date-Received: Tue, 1-Dec-87 05:56:22 EST References: <4149@utai.UUCP> <1160@uhccux.UUCP> <3810@bellcore.bellcore.com> <2266@kitty.UUCP> Organization: Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine Lines: 65 Summary: Truck horn in a school locker Xref: mnetor sci.electronics:1826 rec.humor:9134 << Larry's Drive-in confession >> I can't come close to being as inventive as Larry and the truly monumental drive-in prank, but it did remind me of being a devious prankster in highshcool and college. My favorite prank was rigging lockers in highschool. My friends and I would cruise the streets on trash pick-up day looking for old TVs and radios. We'd grab the speakers to make oscillators for lockers. One time I wrapped up the 8 D-cells for the oscillaotr in brown shopping bag paper. When the janitor found it (naturally the guilty return to the scene of the crime to gloat over their exploits) he saw the blown tubualr battery packs and thought it was a bomb. I don't know how he and the principal missed me, as I was sitting on the steps about 20 feet away colapsed in laughter. The best locker device was an old truck horn that a friend picked up at a garage sale. About a dozen kids got together and descended in several waves on all the local Radio Shack stores to get 96 D-cells with our free battery-of-the-month cards. The trigger device was a little 12 volt crystal-can relay held open by an almost dead Radio Shack 9 volt battery. When the battery went dead, we planned, the contacts of the relay would be sacrificially welded together and activate the horn at deafening volume. We warned the planter not to test the trigger, as it was planned to be sacrificial. We became suspicious, when after 1/2 hour there was no blaring horn audible. The planter admitted to having tested the trigger. We conned the planter to go out and kick the locker in hopes that it would jar the horn to life, as resitution for violating our orders. When he kicked the locker, the relay crippled by tre previous test, set the horn off sounding like a half dead cow. Somehow, we got away with it, eventhough it should have been obvious to the teachers that we were guilty. I think that the teachers were secretly amused too. I got my "bomb" oscillator back by stealing it back from the physics teacher's classroom, where it had been sent by the principal for "analysis". I was much less inventive in college. Actually I had some grandiose plans, but never got the time between studying to implement them. The best prank there was a time delay device built with a 555 timer and a couple of 7493 and a 7400. I set it up so that after 1/2 hour, the last 7493 wold set a latch and energize a reed realy to turn on a motor run by a D cell. The motor as directly attacted to a thread spool on the motor shaft. The motor supplied just enough torque to overcome the friction supplied by a paperclip and allow gravity to take over and unwind several feet of thread from the spool. A giant squishy plastic tarantula purchased at a Spencer Gifts was attached to the thread. The whole contraption was concealed in a small box that had originally been the shipping carton for a Triad interstage audio transformer. The device was small enough to sit on top of a pull-down movie screen in the front of the Electromagnetic Fields Theory I class room. One day, about half way through a particularly uninteresting lecture, the spider made its descent. What was fun was that the prank device was clearly visible to the class before the descent, but not the instructor. Fortunately, the general laughter that erupted saved the truly guilty party (me) from being nabbed. Bill Mayhew NEOUCOM (wtm@neoucom.UUCP)