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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)