Heck yeah I remember BW TV!  I hated those darn rabbit ears with tin foil on them. Also the manual tuners. It sucked being a two legged remote control!

I remember many trips to the corner convenience store to test a handful of vacuum tubes to determine which one was bad. After the first few times it wasn't so bad because the same ones would keep going out.

I'd bet those tube tester kiosks (I don't think this word existed back then) with a stock of tubes are worth a fortune today.

Holy hell, i never knew things were so hard in the olden daysStick out tongue How did you guys stand it? Black and white TV? only 4 Channels? It must have been terribleWink lol.

Someday we will have to tell you about the many, many miles we walked in the snow to get to school!

mitsdude

Holy hell, i never knew things were so hard in the olden daysStick out tongue How did you guys stand it? Black and white TV? only 4 Channels? It must have been terribleWink lol.

Someday we will have to tell you about the many, many miles we walked in the snow to get to school!

Oh yes, and it was uphill both ways if I recall...

I am 33, been building model aircraft since age 6, never stopped. Our first computer was the Sinclair Spectrum but it got replaced by a more powerful Commodore 64 within a year.... 64k speed machine!
I remember beeing sysop of the highschool BBS with a few friends, we made a BBS because nobody had Internet (this was 1995)

I think everyone under 40 is young in the modeling community.
There used to be the "young guns GB", a GB especially for young modellers. Maybe you could start a new one to get in touch with other younger members.

Anyone remember HiFi ?

"The aviators prayer" at station sign off ?

The first transistor radio's ?

"Hop Along Casidy" and his side kick Gingles ?

Engineer Bill and drinking your milk too "red light -green light" ?

A tv set with a round screen ?

Huntley - Brinkley report ?

Smoking while shopping at Sears ?

3 speed bicycles ?

Nailing your set of skates to a 2x4 o make a skate board ?

Cheap products made in Japan ?

Nothing stamped "made in China" ?

No shopping malls ?

90 % of everything made in the US of A ?

Three speed bicycles?

Better than that ; Single speed bicycles

Anyone remember Sears in Chicago selling guns?

Now that was a long time ago.

Oh ya , i had a Huffy " Roadmaster" b4 the 3 speed . Big ole baloon tires with white walls and a head light powered by 2 "d" cell batteries .

Shopping from a Sears catalog for just about anything ?

Sears at Six Corners in Chicago had a separate gun department selling Sears brand guns and military surplus rifles.

I had a Sears single speed bike with same accessories.

Houses in Sears catalog a bit before my time, however.

Universal M1 carbines used to list in the Sears catalog for around $50.  I used to drool over those as a young lad.  My dad had carried one in the ETO in WWII, and boy, did they look cool to me then(early 60's)!

Gary

Texgunner

Universal M1 carbines used to list in the Sears catalog for around $50.  I used to drool over those as a young lad.  My dad had carried one in the ETO in WWII, and boy, did they look cool to me then(early 60's)!

Gary

Well, I'm certainly not under 21 (double that for me too!) but since it's turned into a nostalgia thread: 

Yeah my first computer was a C-64 too, loved the thing. Even though my current jacked-up monster PC gaming rig excels it in every way sometimes I think about going on ebay and picking up another C-64. 

And I remember four channels: NBC,CBS, ABC, and PBS. Then we got FOX and had to tie aluminum foil to the rabbit ears to get better reception! Even with just those channels I remember Airwolf, The A-Team, Magnum PI and a bunch of other great shows. I've picked up a few of them on DVD and prefer them over modern stuff, shows back then were heroic and fun and not so dark, depressing, and dull. 

I would have loved to have watched the Apollo 11 landing live but I was preparing to blast out of the womb into the strange new alien world myself...

Star Trek: The Next Generation is still the 'new' Trek to me even though it's twenty-five years old now. 

I remember Rubic's Cube, playing Space Invaders at the arcade, playing the Atari VCS display at Woolco, New Coke, and a bunch of other strange things kids these days would think pretty quaint...  

Sprue-ce Goose

"Sears at Six Corners in Chicago had a separate gun department selling Sears brand guns and military surplus rifles."

 

 

Sears in Miami at Biscayne Blvd and about 13th had them too. I still have a .22 rifle with the Sears brand but it looks identical to the Winchester model. My brother bought it for about $40 brand new.

Shellback

Shopping from a Sears catalog for just about anything ?

Guys, I'm only 21 PLUS 57 but I remember that the Sears catalog had other uses too, particularly in the out(side) rooms. I know because my GrandDad taught me!!! Of course, you could always read the page you'd torn out before you used it for its ultimate purpose. Too, that big ole catalog had lots of paper for folding model airplanes.

Gotta remember those old "Blue Laws".

Cities/Towns were pretty much shutdown on Sundays except for gas stations and convenience stores.

You could buy hammers and screw drivers on Sunday but not nails or screws. A few brave stores did try to section off certain departments but it didn't last long.

50 yrs old. 50% through life, less than 10% through my stash.

Born 18 October, 1961, Donaldson AFB. Hunter AFB when JFK was shot. TV at Lajes Field was 12'Oclock High and Combat. Schwin Stingray with Banana seat and sissy bar at Pope when the Eagle landed. Going to the theater every saturday to see Patton, Midway, True Grit, Pearl Harbor at  Lackland when they were just out. Re-typing something 3 times on an IBM so an officer would give me a sig. First computer I ever saw was the Green Machine. Admin would take ice and fans to the field with them to keep them running in the summer. Remember seeing the communicater on Star Trek and thinking, wouldn't that be nice? All we had was pay phones. For some of us things have gone so far in our time it is hard to imagine what will happen in the next 50. But, I reckon there will always be folks puting glue to plastic. Cheers, Mac

I remember watching a seven inch round screen b&w tv in the early 1950's, the first one I can recall.  When we got our first 12" rectangular screen b&w tv (a Crosley), circa 1955-56, I thought we'd moved up in the world considerably.  Three channels was all there were.  They signed off the air each night at midnight or 1 AM.

My favorite thing as a kid, as far back as I can remember, was always Saturday morning TV.  Who remembers Tom Corbett and his Space Cadets?  Captain Midnight (a few years later dubbed over as Jet Jackson, and recycled)?  Flash Gordon?  Commander Cody, Sky Marshall of the Universe?  Sky King?  And my favorite of all, Mighty Mouse and Friends?  And on and on ... all early '50's stuff.

We got our first color tv circa 1963, or there abouts, a 19 incher(!).  I was a young adult, just out of the Navy (1971), when I signed up for community antenna tv in El Cajon, CA.  CATV became what we now call cable, and it had great reception on all of the San Diego, Tijuana and LA stations, which I thought was cutting-edge technology (and it was, at the time), and simply amazing.  IIRC, about 13 or 14 channels.

Analog (rotary) phones, party lines, milkmen, cars that got 6 mpg ... ahh, the good old days .

Being retired, with not much better to do (the paint is drying on the current build), I have put together a quick, unofficial tab of the results so far.  I did some math and some reckoning on posts with no exact number, and a few posters were left out because there wasn't enough such info with which to work.

Remember, Ozzman's OP asked, who here is under 21?

20-something (over 21) = 1; 30-something = 7; 40-something = 14; 50-something = 11; 60-something = 8; 70-something = 3.

Nobody 21 or under has replied, that I can tell.

Old Ordie

Nobody 21 or under has replied, that I can tell.

Considering that so many of that age group are on line for social reasons, that is significant.

I  miss the old signoffs. The aviators poem followed by the Indian Head test screen and a high pitched tone and then the eerie sound of static.

Usually between 12:00 AM and 1:00 AM. On weekends 2:00 AM

When I was modelling,,,I would have music on in the background...

.....ahh those wonderful 8-track cassetttes.

Well not sure why they haven't responded here but other than Scorpionmikey CallsignOwl and The Real Red Baron are both under 21. So there are at least a few posters here who aren't as ancient as the rest of us.

mitsdude

I  miss the old signoffs. The aviators poem followed by the Indian Head test screen and a high pitched tone and then the eerie sound of static.

Usually between 12:00 AM and 1:00 AM. On weekends 2:00 AM

I believe the movie The Poltergeist did for leaving the TV on with the test pattern and static what the movie Jaws did for swimming in the ocean at night.

I have six kids, three of them are above the age of 21 and three of them are below the age of 21. Everyone of them have been exposed to model building. Only my 18 yr old daughter built with any interest, and she stopped when she was 11. My 7 yr old son does like to help, but mainly wants to play with the completed products. Needless to say, he's gone through several Star Wars and Speed Racer model kits.

My 7-year-old daughter is having fun building models.  She finished a Hellcat a couple of years ago (all I did was supervise, instruct, and spraypaint.  She did everything else, including masking and decals.).  We are now each doing a P-40.  She will be doing everything on this one, including the spray painting.

Rob Gronovius

mitsdude

I  miss the old signoffs. The aviators poem followed by the Indian Head test screen and a high pitched tone and then the eerie sound of static.

Usually between 12:00 AM and 1:00 AM. On weekends 2:00 AM

I believe the movie The Poltergeist did for leaving the TV on with the test pattern and static what the movie Jaws did for swimming in the ocean at night.

I have six kids, three of them are above the age of 21 and three of them are below the age of 21. Everyone of them have been exposed to model building. Only my 18 yr old daughter built with any interest, and she stopped when she was 11. My 7 yr old son does like to help, but mainly wants to play with the completed products. Needless to say, he's gone through several Star Wars and Speed Racer model kits.

Both of my sons are over 21. The youngest had "0" interest in models, not even cars. The oldest did build until he was about 14 but now has "0" interest. My 7 year old grandson sometimes wants to help but it only lasts about 10 minutes.

I just turned 26 last month

25!

mitsdude

I  miss the old signoffs. The aviators poem followed by the Indian Head test screen and a high pitched tone and then the eerie sound of static.

Usually between 12:00 AM and 1:00 AM. On weekends 2:00 AM

Here ya go, the one I saw as a kid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzQYd_INSOg

17 yesterday! got a trumpeter challenger 2!!