Getting my hands dirty

This morning I started work toward my Community Connection practicum. Tim took me to a small production studio at the far end of CJLX' studio complex where he had me dismantle a quarter inch reel-to-reel tape deck and salvage its useful parts. Apparently switches, terminal mounts, electro-magnets and even springs are among the items commonly sought by media school and maintenance people at the college.

Of the parts I found most interesting:  three high capacity resistors connected in parallel, wired to one of the tape deck's mechanical circuits. In our Electronics Fundamentals and Digital Fundamentals classes we have been told that the physical size of the resistor is an indicator of its power handling capacity. In our labs we work with low capacity carbon resistors. It was nice to see the much larger high capacity resistors up close for the first time.

I hadn't taken apart consumer electronics in many years. This was my first time dismantling a piece of professional electronics and I thoroughly enjoyed it! It felt good to get my hands dirty, learning how all the parts work together. By the time I had to clean up for my first morning class I had the reel-to-reel machine almost completely dismantled and its salvaged parts sorted. Another 30 minutes of work and I should have it finished.

I left for my first class with a sense of accomplishment this morning. One and half hours completed, twenty-three and a half hours remaining and my Community Connection volunteer work will be complete. The ball is finally rolling.

CJLX: My community connection placement

After two unanswered attempts to make contact with someone at TV Cogeco, I decided last week to proceed with plan B:  CJLX. As luck would have it, CJLX's chief engineer and Audio/Video professor Tim Rorabeck teaches a second year class Wednesdays in room 3L10 prior to our Electronics class in the same room. I was able to ask him if he needed any technical assistance that I could use toward my practicum. Tim indicated that he had work for at least two of us, and agreed to meet Nick Slade and I Thursday morning to show us what he needed to be done.

When we arrived, Tim took us downstairs to what is commonly referred to in the industry as 'the boneyard', a storage space with a lots of old discarded audio/video equipment from the broadcast, journalism and other departments at Loyalist College. He showed us old overhead projectors, reel-to-reel tape decks, Sony CRT monitors, VTR's and countless other pieces of professional analog media equipment. Many of these items are still functional, but outmoded for today's digital media workplace. Tim wants us to disassemble some of these items and salvage any useful or valuable parts from them such as lenses and power cords from overhead projectors and connectors from the back of broken VTR's. Other items like still functioning Sony Colour CRT monitors and VTR's need to be tested and documented for any technical faults to be repaired before they're offered for sale.

While the above mentioned placement work isn't glamorous, I know that salvaging is widely used throughout the broadcast industry as a way to cut costs and waste in what is an already very capital intensive business. I was aware of similar practices during my previous volunteer experiences at not-for-profit community radio stations, and from listening to stories from broadcast engineers on the 'This Week in Radio Tech' podcast. Power cords and connectors individually aren't very expensive, but when hundreds are used each costing $5 or $10 salvaging does makes sense (as a basic example). An old CRT monitor or VTR that no longer suits a modern television studio might still suit a sister studio in a smaller market. Discarding a functioning piece of professional audio or visual equipment when it might be of use elsewhere is both wasteful and irresponsible to the environment.

I'm relieved to have found a fall placement for my practicum, and looking forward to taking apart some old gear that I may hear about but rarely encounter in my new career.