Tornadoes in Minnapolis

[mayken4now]

Robert! Are you Ok? We are watching this on TV and are thinking of you and yours!

Steve

 

[southernmdgeguy]

I was just going to post this, heard it is in a town called Roseville, and moving southwest? Hope everyone in the path has heard the news and taken cover.

 

[westytoploader]

Robert, hope everything is OK and you, Neal & Gladys STAY SAFE! If the tornado comes your way, go in the basement! Probably wouldn't be a bad idea to strap yourself to the Whirlpool Combo either...

 

[Unimatic1140]

Thanks for Everyone's Concern!

Hi Guys, no we are just fine. The tornado sirens have now stopped ringing now so we are up from the basement. Apparently a tornado touched down in the northeastern Metro suburb of Roseville, but at first reports it appears that it caused very little damage as it wasn't on the ground very long. Its still raining but it suppose to clear and we're going to see our first breath of fall thankfully tomorrow. It was almost 90 degress again today, but its suppose to be 47 Friday morning. YAY, I can't wait. By this time of year I am so ready for cool temperatures I could just scream!

 

[maytagbear]

I think we're all a little on edge

with the weather.

My sister, brother-in-law, and nieces live in a Minneapolis suburb called Richfield, and they're ok.

In fact, I got off the phone with them just now, and they hadn't heard of the Roseville tornado.

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[southernmdgeguy]

GLAD TO HEAR IT!

Thanks for letting us know, we are all edgy with the weather these days! I know what you mean about fall weather, been in the 90's for so long, and over a month with no rain here.

 

[Unimatic1140]

And Now

My 1953 Sparton TV being worked on this evening on my bench shows a safe landing at LAX for the Jet Blue Plane in trouble. YAY!!!

 

[tolivac]

Unimatic:Was looking at the picture from your Spartan of the scene of the airliner making the emerg landing in LAX-and thought of this-when the all digital broadcasts begin-How will old TV fans watch their sets-Get the HDTV converter-or a modulator for your DVD player-you could then watch old movies and TV shows recorded on DVD's thru the set.-Just a thought-when the day comes that the analog TV broadcast bands will be shut down-probably another year or so before this happens.The FCC is pushing stations to convert to digital.The low band VHF band-channels 2-5 are to be auctioned off.I enjoyed working on some of the transmitters that would broadcast to those sets-RCA,GE,Sarkes-Tarzian.S-T now makes rectifiers and semiconductor products.They used to build TV transmitters.

 

[mayken4now]

THANKS BE TO GOD! All is well in Minneapolis!

Sorry I spelled it wrong on the subject drift!! LOL, I cannont type worth a suds lock!

Ok good to all and lets keep in touch with our Texas friends.

Steve

 

[Kenmorepeter5]

NEWS

Before I watched TV News (from NewsChannel4 in New York) about the Jet Blue Airline's trouble!
Where was the airline from?

-- Peter

 

[Unimatic1140]

Rex the picture you are seeing on the '53 is actually from a Digital Cable broadcast. If you have cable the box acts as a converter. But for the most part I use my vintage TV's to watch vintage TV shows on DVD, which I run through a RF Modulator to the vintage TV. Works great.

Notice that with the rounded corners of a vintage TV tube the modern graphics of CNN get cut off at the edges! In 1953 there was no such thing as a text scroll at the bottom, nor were there logos at the very edges. Today's sets have square corner screens where all this extra info fits into to.

 

[jetcone]

What a night

I just watched that very plane touch down then I came up here to check the posts as I now see Rita is a CAT 5! And Uni gets slapped with tornadic weather. A very active end of summer.

Everything I own is crossed for the gulf coast!

 

[tlee618]

Robert I too am so glad that you are safe and sound!! Now we can only hope that all our friends in the south will be too. Terry

 

[retromom]

Whirlwind weather!

Robert:

Glad to hear you, Neal, and Gladys are safe! Is this not the craziest summer ever? Well....at least we had some fun summer convention memories, right?

Take care and watch out for those twisters!

Venus

 

[dalangdon]

Text scrolls and graphics.

I despise text scrolls, and most of the graphics are so corny they make me want to change the channel. Maybe I should get me one of them vintage TV's ;-)

Glad to hear you weren't affected by the twister. That's one thing about the midwest I decidedly don't miss.

 

[spiraclean]

Glad your safe

Hi Robert,
I am glad to hear your safe I did not realize there had been tornadoes in Minneapolis till I read this thread.
Your Sparton TV is cool; can you still get tubes (Thermionic Valves) for it? You sure are talented being able to restore old TV's as well as appliances.

All the best.
Hugh

 

[frigilux]

Glad you went to the basement, Robert. I was on the phone with a friend who lives in NE Minneapolis at the University/Broadway intersection. He was on his front porch and I could hear the wind come up over the phone! He said "I'll call back later. I'm going to the basement, now!" Things looked ugly in the SW corner of the state, but no action. We received a spritz and that was it---not bad, considering the sky was that scary gray-green and it was hot and humid...

 

[estatesale_gary]

Large trees down in Golden Valley

Hi All - I live directly west of Downtown Minneapolis and our area got hit pretty hard. Jason and I lost our huge Norway maple tree that was in our front yard (boo-hoo). It was BIG...split in half. It missed the house by about 5 feet. A few homes up the street have trees on their roof...many uprooted trees (including our neighbor across the street). The damage was far worse in the northern suburbs (probably 15 miles north and west of us). I just talked to one of my co-workers and he's going to need a new roof, new siding, several new windows. Apparently, his neighbors deck is in his driveway! It was crazy!

 

[peterh770]

Glad all is well there.

Maybe we should get Greg one of those vintage sets so that when Anderson Cooper comes on, he'll roll off the screen and onto the living room floor.

 

[Unimatic1140]

Ohh Gary I'm sorry to hear you lost a Maple tree, we didn't have any damage in South Minneapolis. The storm was much worse further north.

Hugh, vintage vacuum tubes (or as you guys on that side of the pond call them valves) are very plentiful and easy to find. Its MUCH easier to find vintage TV parts than it is to find vintage washer parts, capacitors and resistors are still made today, and changing those are 90% of the work in restoring a vintage Television set.

 

[geoffdelp]

We lucked out in Foley. The storm was right near us in Duelm (about 10 miles to our southeast) and I could see the sky to my east was very "active" with churning clouds and lots of lightning.

Gary, I'm sorry about your tree; I know what that feels like. Last year, I lost my 30+ year old willow tree in my back yard; it split in half during a storm and flattened my garden mid-season. I lost my small maple tree in the front yard at the same time and early this spring, I lost another maple in the front yard; I watched it break in half.

So ... this year I started with new trees!! And no, insurance does not pay for tree removal due to a storm unless it damages a building. Isn't that great????

Geoff

 

[tolivac]

Unimatic-Glad the cable box works with your spartan-didn't think of the set connected to cable.If your TV is on the cable-it would work fine except the graphics-but a good thing-with the round picture tube sreen-you may not have to look at those awful "net Logs" that are broadcast in the corner of your screen-burning your tube if the set is CRT or plasma.If you find an older LaserDisc machine-you can use that to run old movies into your vintage TV's.Usually older Laserdisc machines had modulators-and not to overlook VCRs as well.The Macrovision encoding on some VHS tapes and DVD's may present problems with older TV's-Does it affect yours?It seemed to affect older color sets more so than monochrome ones.
As far as the tubes go-they are plentiful-but EXPENSIVE for some newer ones-esp "audio" tubes.Transmitter tubes are still plentiful-but more expensive.One Russian company makes them and two make "receiving" tubes-Audio and TV tubes.I am having trouble finding HV electrolytic caps-want to rebuild my McInTosh Monoblocks.Most of my tube "stock" came from radio stations that replaced their small tube gear with SS.And some of their burnt up transmitter tubes end up in my small transmitting tube collection.

 

[spiraclean]

Vacuum Tubes (Valves)

Hi Robert,
Thanks for the information on the vacuum tubes; I am surprised that they are still available. I have repaired a few pre WW2 radios and as you say it’s usually a capacitor or resistor that’s at fault. I love the way the old radios are put together with all the components soldered to the tube sockets and each other not a circuit board to be seen, are the vintage TVs made the same way? I have a fully working pre WW2 radio by Pye Radio Works Cambridge the sound quality is superb, I also have a fully working Grundig reel to reel tape recorder of the vacuum tube design not sure of its age though but it is not as old as the radio.

All the best.
Hugh

 

[scott55405]

Wow, just amazing all the awful/unusual things going on lately. I heard about the tornado activity in Minneapolis (for whatever reason it is always the same certain suburban areas that always seem to get hit). Gary I'm sorry to hear of the tree loss you suffered, but glad you're ok.

I was shocked to log into the Star Tribune and see it was in the mid 80s yesterday. Must have been humid to have triggered such a storm, unusual for this late in the season.

That Jet Blue thing was quite something. I work right by the airport and we were able to watch part of it from our windows. Also saw a lot of news and police cars and things lined up on the side of the road on the way home (drive right alongside the airport). So glad things worked out in the end, but what a production, flying around the city for 3 hours.

 

[DADoES]

Being involved in my own local weather conditions, I'm just now reading this thread. I did see something on TV about it, I believe a house with the porch torn off and a gaping hole in the side and roof. Scary, disturbing stuff. Happy to hear our guys are OK.