[TenTec] My Omni 6 appears to be fixed

[Art Trampler]

The Fixation of Five Sixty-Three

 

There be strange smoking toil, by the night’s waning oil,

When men quell their chirps and their clicks,

But the strangest it seems, so near to our dreams

Was the night near the snake of the Williams Lake

When Joe repaired his old Omni Six.

 

Now Joe was a man who was known as a ham,

Who would dit and dah with the best

But his dear Omni Six, in need of a fix

Had a stuck PLL borne on vapors of hell

That gave our dear OM no rest.

 

So Joe turned to the reflector, a knowledge collector

Where the oracle was known to lurk

And was given good fodder to search for some solder

That was cold in the joint-now you see my point

That had caused this unsettling quirk.

 

With iron in hand, smoke rings rose in a band

Round his head like ethereal wraith

And o’er the circuits he went with a hard-focused bent

To make tin and lead flow like spilt blood in the snow

Yet still t’was an act of his faith.

 

For circuits that die are ne’er hard to come by

Yet to resurrect them requires the knack,

That is found less these days, lost in mists and in haze

To fix what is broken, a repair more than token

In the quiet of Joe’s radio shack.

 

Yet when he was done was he sure he had won,

This battle with solder joints cold?

It would seem that he was, or that was the buzz

Which passed round the net (did you place a bet?)

At least that’s how this tale has been told.

 

When at last came the hour when he restored power

Cold display pierced the shack’s whelming night

He placed his hand to the dial, then turning it while

The numbers did change—said I before it was strange

QRG dancing now in his sight.

 

Thus a fine fix did Joe bring to his Six,

And it plays now as in its youth

Each circuit now works, no duty it shirks

All joints are now well, yet still cold as hell

Hear all you men, ‘tis the truth.

 

So when next you hear Joe’s signal come near

I ask you friend, bear this yarn in mind

That our Joe was not slow

To repair with all care

A Six needing a Fix from its bind.

 

There be strange smoking toil, by the night’s waning oil

And the strangest by far to these ears

Was the night that Joe fought with what Ten-Tec had wrought

Coiled near to the snake of that old Williams Lake

And it may be the strangest for years.

 

Art 

KØRO