What's your strangest improvised tool?

[jeyurkon]

Back in about 1971 my OIC in the Air Force was having me repair his color TV of about 12 years. He finally decided he wanted a new one and asked me to look at his again to see if it was worth repairing, indicating that he hoped it wasn't. I concurred. He gave me the set to play with.

The next day at work he asked me if I had repaired it already and I sheepishly said yes. This was long ago, I think it was just a glo-bar resistor that was bad.

After adjusting the purity rings and static convergence it had a great picture. But the degaussing circuit was dead and every time I moved the TV, it needed degaussing.

Being a poor airman, I didn't think I could afford a degaussing coil so I improvised. I had a 50Ft extension cord. Of course you can't just coil it up because the flux created by the current flowing in one leg is cancelled by the current flowing in the opposite direction in the other leg. So, I plugged one side of each end into each other leaving the other prong/socket open. Then with two more extension cords also arranged dangerously I was close. The inductance of a 50FT extension cord coiled isn't enough to limit the current so I plugged the dorm floor polisher into it. I figured it would draw 10-15amps.

It worked like a charm, except my NCOIC walked in to see me waving this yellow coil of extension cord in front of the TV while a dorm mate was polishing my floor with the polisher hooked up to it.

This was a bit difficult to explain, but by then they were used to my different way of doing things.

John