Friends rent places in Phoenix for 2-3 months and usually a golf cart is included in the rent.
What Iâve read about restoring old radios is that the most likely component failure is capacitors. Some restorers ârecapâ the whole radio. But telling you all the wiring needs to be replaced is an overstatement, unless someone who knows actually inspected your radio. Iâve never run across that recommendation. There are power supplies that can slowly bring the radio up to its full 110V, to help avoid a dramatic failure. Itâs worth looking for someone who can appreciate and rehab your radio, howeverâŠ
Whatâs happened since the hayday of these radios is that almost all the classic shortwave broadcasters are gone - or in the case of BBC, now distributed via satellite and local FM stations. AM broadcast band radio has lost most of its genuine local programming, and is hurt by new sources of electronic interference. That doesnât keep me from liking these old radios and trying to keep them going.
Golf cart? Never, never use one⊠defeats the whole purpose of having fun AND getting exercise. I would pay extra to walk. Plus, I play faster than folks in carts. I try and be tough as nails and keep asking my wife , âCan your âsenior citizenâ do this?â
If I was going to play golf riding on my butt, Iâd sooner stay home and fire up my old Tandy computer with Microsoft golf and play on an RGB monitor! Thatâs just how I decided to roll.
CSA 
Iâve played on courses where you didnât have the option. Carts were mandatory.
Making squat? In 1978 as a Private E-2 I got $354 every month. Righteous bucks! My uncle was a Navy Seaman second class E-2 stationed at Pearl Harbor in June 1941 being handed $24 per month. Six months later he got to earn those âbig bucksâ!
That is very true. I avoid those courses. Some of the newer courses are designed where the greens to tees are just too far. Thatâs fine. Those are for people who donât care for fitness (you know⊠beer belly, greasy food, cigarsâŠ) I prefer the more mature âlinksâ style courses.
**CSA**
Once a year here they have an âice golfâ charitable fund raiser. Play golf on the lake ice. Ya just donât need green grass and 80 degrees for golf-just need a colored ball.
Iâve done that right in front of my northern residence that is on a 10,000+ acre lake. When one finds themselves doing that they seriously have to re-evaluate. Itâs fun, but thatâs only because there is nothing else anybody can do that is.
CSA
There was a huge payraise enacted in 1972. Between that and making Sgt., my pay in '72 went up dramatically. But still below the private sector.
And hourly comparisons? Not possible. When youâre in the military, itâs not a job⊠itâs what you ARE, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Itâs your entire life. Where you live, how you live, how you dress, what you do, how you do it, itâs all controlled 100% by the military. Iâm not complaining, mind you, I personally think it my years in the military were the best years of my life, but IMHO we were making squat. Admittedly, I wasnât married and lived on base, so others getting dependent and perdiem benefits were certainly making more. As a matter of fact, my first year in the military was spent on training bases, and in those days we couldnât even leave the base without a âclass A passâ.
I envied those who felt that way. I did not. I felt in prison for two years. I got my honorable discharge okay, but not happily. Different strokes, etc.
I remember the day I was released. It was 12 Feb, still winter. I left Fort Lewis and headed east in my 1953 Chevrolet. I was going up in altitude, seems like by memory it must have been Pendleton, Oregon. A HP pulled me over. I knew my plates were expired, but at that time if you were military they were automatically extended. I had already been stopped once for those plates.
But, no, he wanted to advice me to stop for the night, because the pass (I canât remember which one) was going to experience a major snow. I had planned to stop there anyway.
The next morning, I went up and the snow blowers had opened the highway. Yes, I would not have made it in the night. The snow was like 20 feet high on both sides of the lanes, and no exits were open for a long time. It had been one tremendous snow storm.
I drove that car until next year when I bought a new 1967 Chevy II, which took me to New York City and back. Seventeen hours from where I lived, and entered NYC as the sun was coming up.
I gave the 1953 to an older brother who drove it for quite a while. A few weeks ago, a younger sister reminded me that I had taught her to drive in that car.
That car was the most abused car I ever owned. Before I went in the Army, was my wild years. I drove extremely fast on those winding gravel roads. I took the oil bath air cleaner and tossed it in the trunk, along with the fan blades. Then, I loosened the distributor and at idle turned it to maximum idle speed.
I normally ran up to around 30 mph in first, and over 60 in second. Once, just before leaving for service, I ran it at 96 indicated, down a long hill north of town. A 1953 was probably intended to run 15 in first and 30 in second. And, for all I know that 96 indicated might have been much, much slower true speed.
Of course, it was not good for it. So, my first leave from Ft. Lewis, I went home and put in a rebuilt motor and transmission. Then, that car went to the West Coast, drove around over a year, then back home.
I never hit anyone, nor went off the road. Not every wild kid can say that. 
When I got out, I never again drove like a crazy person. That part of my life was over, forever. It did leave me with some extra driving skills, though.
Quote: âElectronics courses, automotive courses, medical courses, and many others have lab requirements. Theyâre an essential and required part of the learning process. Itâs only right for the VA to pay for them.â Unquote
I have done a few kits at my own expense and can easily see that assembling an electronic kit teaches little unless you are starting from complete zero. If my work friend assembled something useful for a career in electronics such as a sine/square wave generator, a capacitor checker or an oscilloscope if such a kit was available then that would be justified. Assembling a TV at taxpayer expense was a nearly total scam in the 1960s!
I have found most mechanics are either
- Real bad raging alcoholics
- Really over the top religious
- Extreme introverts who socially awkward
- Just doing mechanic work until they find something better, tired of fighting flat rate and the warranty nonsense.
I used to go to an old school mechanic, the kind that was hungover every day, threw tools, smoked like a freight train and cussed like a sailor on leave.
He always smoked even when doing work on fuel tanks and would fly into a rage every time the phone rang when he was in the middle of something. If someone wanted a price and he was in a poor mood, he was likely to tell you to go to schoroeders over in the next county and hang up on you.
He re cored radiators, relined shoes, blew brakes off with compressed air.
He sold cars that he fixed up and sold them. One time a guy bought a car, I think it was a ford elite, I still can remember that car, anyway the car was having problems and the guy brought it back and the mechanic beat the tar out of the guy.
The shop has been closed for around 20 or more and now the roof is caving in. Sad, I have so many memories.
Generalize much?
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Throw in Gay and reminds me of Chefs in the restaurant business.
⊠as opposed to chefs in a different line of work?
In any event, every chef whom I have ever knownâand there were manyâwere very⊠straight.
Again⊠Generalize much?
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I find that many consumers are
Ignorant, greedy, dishonest, or a combination of these.
âHolier than thouâ when it comes to dealing with the blue collar trade.
Lacking the basic intelligence and skill to explain what they want.
Ignorant to the fact that they are financially and physically responsible for items under their care.
OK, no, I really donât think that. I do think that there are many uneducated and therefore poor and frustrated people out there who view mechanicsâand most other people for that matterâas being out there to fleece them. They seek the lowest price for a service with no regard for the cost and then are unhappy with the results. And the reputation just perpetuates itself.
For the record, the days of the cigar-chomping, grease-covered, grumpy-ass mechanic are long gone.
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Growing up the generalization was chefâs were alcoholic or gay, turned true in my experience, drinking the cooking wine with the Chefâs after work, gay was not for me, but went to a few gay bars and mens clubs just to widen my horizon.
I generalize on my experiences very much, you? Lets call it 80% true in my experience.
This I agree with.
I would also say ASE you are not a mechanic, but a technician.
There are not many mechanics left, but I know two old school shops in our county. One complete with the rude angry mechanic lol.
But coming into the county I live in can seem like going back to a time you though no longer existed. lol
Unfortunately it does here to an extent⊠The past 10 years have seen a great advance in things around here. If you came around here in the mid 1980s it was like going back to 1955, all the way to the blatant racism.
I think most here are past that. At least openly.
@Rick_Rugerson. My experience with old time mechanics dates back to the 1950s. These mechanics loved their work, and liked to diagnose tough automobile problems. Politically, most of them were rather liberal. I donât remember any of them being alcoholics. Maybe I just happened to know the right mechanics.
And what about the rest of the professional wrenches on this particular website . . . ?
Technicians . . . ?
Greasy, foul-mouthed alcoholic mechanics . . . ?
Believe it or not, I actually enjoy reading your rants 
But you sure are clueless, in regards to how you talk about people 
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