Distortion in darlington amplifier

audioguru said:

As an adult I went to night school to learn Spanish so I could communicate with my Spanish wife's parents.

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A Spanish wife, and you go to night school to learn Spanish?
What am I missing here?
Or more likely, what obvious opportunity did you miss?
Spanish is easy, apart from a couple of variations of pronunciation of letters, just say what you see and you are most of the way there.

Nigel Goodwin said:

in the first year you did French, in the second year and above you had the option to also learn either German or Latin as well, but only if you were good enough at French. I suppose the reasoning was that if you weren't good at learning French, then you wouldn't be any good at learning another language either.

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I did five years of French at secondary school. I wasn't exactly brilliant at it, but it has been very useful in later working life. On several occasions I have had to work with French guys whos knowledge of English was zero.
Also good for various holidays to France.
Having said that, I find French quite difficult to listen to and to speak.
The sounds that they use are different from those in "Northern" English.

German on the other hand, I find quite easy, and is something which I have learned mostly on my own, but I lack vocabulary.
Often when I speak German to Germans, they will say that I speak it very well. Probably that Northern English thing again. But then they go and spoil it by using all the big long words that I don't know!

One thing that I do find strangely perturbing, when away in foreign parts, and someone local speaks to me in English without me having given any indication that I am English. This has happened to me in both Norway and Germany.

JimB

I tried to learn English from England but it is difficult for me to understand that their Wotahh is water, and that their Cahh is a car. I went there and drove a little on "the wrong side of the road".
Because there are some French speaking people in Canada then the government speaks both English and French. But the government does not speak in Chinese, Indian, Italian and all the other languages spoken here.

audioguru said:

I tried to learn English from England but it is difficult for me to understand that their Wotahh is water, and that their Cahh is a car. I went there and drove a little on "the wrong side of the road".

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You didn't go to 'England' - it sounds like you went to one specific accented place, where they don't speak proper English.

American actors seem to do the same, when you get an American actor trying to do an English 'accent' it's sounds nothing like anything you've ever heard before.

I also would like to learn Russian.

For the simple reason that I love glass-state electronics (both the vacuum and gas filled variety).
The Russians, for many reasons, continued to employ and develop valves long after the West had abandoned them. As such, there are many very interesting and intriguing valves and circuits being "rediscovered".

The best material sources will be in Russian, although several have English and/or German translations (of varying quality).

PD: I'm glad that this thread has now become polite again.

Anyway - back a bit more on topic

In the past there was a British magazine called 'Radio Constructor', and they published endless designs for TRF radios - here's a nice website showing them:

Way back in this thread I posted a circuit for a four transistor 'proper' amplifier, out of an old radiogram - and suggested it was probably from a Mullard application note - and here it is:

Nigel Goodwin said:

In the past there was a British magazine called 'Radio Constructor'

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I remember it well.
The was a contributor by the name of Sir Douglas Hall, quite frequently they published circuits of his based on some "reflex" receiver design.
Look here:

And talking of Radio Constructor, don't forget the Smithy and Dick pages.
Back in the 60s and 70s I guess that Nigel would have played the part of Dick, these days he would surely be Smithy.
(This will make no sense to those who have not read Radio Constructor).

JimB

JimB said:

I remember it well.
The was a contributor by the name of Sir Douglas Hall, quite frequently they published circuits of his based on some "reflex" receiver design.
Look here:

The Spontaflex Reflex Web Page

the ingenious circuits of Sir Douglas Hall as published in The Radio Constructor.Circuits and construction details for receivers using the automatic spontaflex reflex circuit

www.spontaflex.free-online.co.uk

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The Spontaflex was the name I was trying to remember

And talking of Radio Constructor, don't forget the Smithy and Dick pages.
Back in the 60s and 70s I guess that Nigel would have played the part of Dick, these days he would surely be Smithy.
(This will make no sense to those who have not read Radio Constructor).

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Yes, loved those pages

For those too young:

Dick Smith sold used cars and a few electronic parts in "Down Under".

JimB said:

One thing that I do find strangely perturbing, when away in foreign parts, and someone local speaks to me in English without me having given any indication that I am English. This has happened to me in both Norway and Germany. JimB

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For non natives, I find resorting to English a natural reaction. Not sure if you are consciously aware Jim, that for the majority of people, English is the current lingua franca.

I spent already little less than 50 years in my current job. Very very seldom I used Spanish to communicate with the other part, whether crew members, shippers, authorities, clients or whoever in the activity; good or bad I went away with English. The exception, in Brazil, where I learnt to talk, discuss, write and (heavily) curse in a passable Portuguese. That helped me a lot in Angola as well.

Many years ago, I was in a local maritime agency and in the same office there was a German supercargo talking to his head office in Lübeck. He spoke with several different people there and every time he started a conversation, he did it in English. When I asked him why, he said: because I do not know who is going to answer and most people is not local. I worked later for Lübek as well and found that the operation / brokers and crewing people conformed a small UN.

Last night I watched a French thriller. I realized that what I speak and understand is rather far from what people commonly use on their daily life.

Regarding the coexistence of French and English in Canada I suggest watching the (two) movies "Bon Cop Bad Cop".

atferrari said:

Not sure if you are consciously aware Jim, that for the majority of people, English is the current lingua franca.

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Yes I am aware of that, many people speak English very well, and in some places they speak it very badly!
But the point that I am trying to make is that on two occasions that stick in my mind, once in Germany on a train, the young lady in the buffet car greeted me in English. Admittedly the train originated in Belgium, and all the PA announcements were in German, French, English and Wallony (? the odd Belgian language). As I type, it just occurs to me that she may have been Waloon and was using English as the default language.

Similarly, in a hotel restaurant in Stavanger (Norway), I was spontaneously greeted in English.
As I have blond hair, if I was in a place in Norway and someone was tasked with "find the English guy", I don't think that I would be first on their list.

None of this is a problem to me, it is just one of those musings on the odd things that happen in life.

JimB

JimB said:

One thing that I do find strangely perturbing, when away in foreign parts, and someone local speaks to me in English without me having given any indication that I am English. This has happened to me in both Norway and Germany.

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Probably because you don't look Scandinavian?, my daughter is pale skinned and fair haired, and is always initially approached in the local language in Scandinavian countries because she has similar colouring to the locals.

You didn't have a hanky on your head did you?

My parents lived in Germany for many years. They very often experienced speaking to someone in German and getting a response in English!
I have been told Spanish is the easiest language to learn.
My very limited experience is that languages in general are easy once you get past the idea of them being hard...

throbscottle said:

My parents lived in Germany for many years. They very often experienced speaking to someone in German and getting a response in English!
I have been told Spanish is the easiest language to learn.

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My daughter did Spanish at school because the school was in special measures, and the LA wanted to close it (and sell the site to a housing developer to make a LOT of money!) - so the Government put a 'trouble shooting headmaster' in charge. One of the first things he did was sack all the teachers who were a complete waste of time (keeping the decent ones), and rationalise the classes - the old headmaster would employ a full time teacher to teach a different language, if one single pupil expressed an interest in it.

UK secondary schools have to teach a foreign language (usually French as first choice), so the new head asked the pupils what THEY would prefer, as there was only going to be ONE. The pupils overwhelmingly voted for Spanish, presumably on the grounds they could well be going there and causing the usual drunken chaos as the British seem to do in Spain!.

However, IF Spanish is an easy language to learn, then perhaps I'm been a bit harsh on them?, and 'perhaps' they choose an easy language so they could do well? - nah, not a chance, they wanted cheap Spanish holidays

Yeah I can't imagine the kids sussed out in advance which was the easiest language!

I've been following the links to these vintage radio sites. Whole lot of stuff to read there! Radio has always been a bit esoteric for me - I think I got de-railed from when I did used to experiment with radio circuits as a teen and just never found the magic that seems to inspire so many. But I shall try to make sense of these old, elegant designs...

audioguru said:

As an adult I went to night school to learn Spanish so I could communicate with my Spanish wife's parents. On day one everyone else was fluent in Spanish except me. They all went there to meet Spanish people, not to learn Spanish.

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This just doesn't add up. Surely Spanish people would not be attending a class to learn Spanish? What on earth were all these already-fluent speakers expecting to happen?

Nigel;
I actually saw today a broadcast from a Spanish TV station, commenting on the recent UK's government decision to quarantine every single person returning from Spain, because you know, COVID-19.

What attracted my attention was that the commentator mentioned that Spain is the country within the EU with the largest amount of visitors, and of those visitors the majority by a wide margin are British!

So your assumption that British youngsters want to learn Spanish to assist them in their holidays, may be absolutely correct!!

The Spanish night school I went to (but only one time) was just like a club where Spanish people meet other Spanish people.
Spain got the virus before Britain then Spain got almost finished with it so they opened up the lockdown. But Britain was still adding many people to the sick list and many of them vacationed in Spain, causing a second wave of virus in Spain. Now Britain is banning Spaniards.

Canada is banning Americans, Brazilians and Mexicans but somehow some sneak in. Many Americans cross into Canada in boats and private airplanes.

In many cities around the world you may attend conversation groups for different languages, involving natives, local people and occasional participants.

I learnt about them when having an espresso in a cafeteria where a group (English language) met every Thursday for years.

audioguru said:

I tried to learn English from England but it is difficult for me to understand that their Wotahh is water, and that their Cahh is a car.

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sure you weren't in "Bahhstin"?