"must be able to distinguish colors."

insert red-wire or red-state joke here, your preference.

text REDCROSS to 90999 if you want to donate $10 to relief efforts out east.

that was Reginald Fesseden in 1906  http://www.pavekmuseum.org/fessenden.htm

sucks.  best of luck in your search.

only way you can have overcooling with room temp forced air is if you blow the front panel off and the tube out of the socket.  we can get to 40 below in my neck of the woods, so I'd not use outside air supply

single-bander for a carbon mike input, across the cathode of that 9-pinner.  be interesting to put a grid-dip meter on the tank and see what band it was.  I have a suspicion this was a handbook radio from the 50s.

backstroke.  wear a nice wool sweater to prevent cramps.

myself, I would gas up the car and drive west with the insurance policies and photo albums in the trunk, and the credit cards in the pocket.  after the second refuelling, find a room and watch the weather channel.

in that era, there were a lot of manufacturer-specific power supplies, drive mounts, sometimes goofy cables inside computers, and Compaq was one of the oddballs.  the hard drives were ATA-1 parallel, almost the old Shugart specs.  and just try to find a set of Compaq mounting rails these days!

his best bet is Craiglist or eBay, but there are some boneyard dealers out there.  a Google Shopping search for the individual parts may be a good thing to try.

direct lightning strikes on a powerline will explode "pole pig" transformers.  I saw two flamed by a strike once driving by the U as it happened.  wakes you up.

so protection from a direct strike?  nope.  not within a house.

protection from a nearby surge (induced overvoltage) can be had by taking the first two positions on the breaker panel into a surge protector through the recommended breakers.  power utilities used to push whole-house protection by installing varistor packs inside the meter cabinet, but not any more.

were you to get a licensed electrician to install arc-overs on an intermediate pole between the utility drop and your service mast, down to a fantastic ground mat, and then install smaller arc-overs at the mast itself, beef up the house ground by a factor of four or so over code recommendations, and then surge at the panel and at each sensitive device, you might have a fighting chance.

even broadcast stations sometimes get the finals roached and the RF cabinet scorched by tower strikes, despite everything there being ground except the inner conductor of the hardline, and despite stout protection at the phasers for the antenna pattern.  at my telco, if there is lightning in the area, nobody works on The Frame or in the cable spreader room by order.  doesn't matter if there's a nuclear war in progress, you stay teh hell out of the frame, spreader, and coil rooms.

for initial poking around, if you have a Harbor Freight near you, get one of the $3 throwaway meters.  that is perfectly good for very casual work by anybody.

got my Beckman (d) at a local parts house (d) 40 years ago.  got my Fluke at Sears about 8 years ago for $80.  got my Triplett 300 series old-school meter (1950s series) off Fleabay a year ago for higher voltage than 1000 VDC.  dual-trace storage scope off Fleabay.  pretend freq counter from Radio Shack about 12 years ago and still using it as a secondary frequency readout.

if you need a cap/inductance meter, get the AADE kit for about $80, it whales the competition.

maybe you can detect a pattern here... anybody can sell you something new for more money than you have.  if you are making a living from it, and need calibration like W8JI, you are going to have to go there, or to a known reliable metrology/used equipment supplier that has the ability to calibrate to NIST-traceable standards.

otherwise, when you need a piece of equipment, look all over.  hit the web.  if possible, get something locally you can test to see if it works.  otherwise, cleanest machine close yo your price level, wherever it is.  hamfest, fleabay, craigslist, whatever.

HAM is Attic Greek for "cheaper than a hillbilly."

the blue cores in old computer power supplies are IF range, 100-800 KHz, they should swamp anything above audio with a few turns.  I've had good luck with those for a while, and the price is right.  otherwise, open up the speaker cases at the weld line and put .01s across the input, speaker, and power leads.

the Lord is merciful, we just don't always recognize his ways and times.  may he comfort you both, and in time, welcome her and restore you.

the old-time pencil-tapping trick will get quite a few nutty tubes to show themselves, but if it's gas, you either have to leave 'em on the tube tester and watch for needle bounces, or catch them in the circuit.

go home, get the confuser fired up, and register for unemployment at once.  start personal networking with your buds to see if anybody's hiring.

most jobs now are NOT listed with job service.  they are temp to hire, or friend referrals when they hear something's opening up. but work everything out there, and work it hard.

unemployment is paid for about 50% by the outfit that fired you, so get in early and get all you can.  they've got it coming to them.

I'm on my 3rd career, 5 or 6 total variants, and that's typical nowadays.

best of luck.  you do have an opportunity to work that 3 am DX now.

back end of any Heathkit manual, the "how it works" section.

descriptions/circuits section of any RCA receiving tube manual.

just about any old Popular Electronics article has a "how it works" section as well.

believe the old GE Transistor Manuals from the early 60s also show example circuits and how the actives in the circuit work.

or are you looking for something like old DeVry or RCA Institutes home study manuals, which are often on ePay?  I learned a ton from a neighbor's old DeVry course books in the mid 60s.

hang in, Vince.  tin-star dictator manager who hoses everything she touches just gave my wife a 10-day unpaid for following directions 3-1/2 years ago.  needless to say, the clusterish conditions surrounding same are run up the flagpoles at Institutional Compliance and General Counsel there, as well as the union channels and the Federal and state labor departments.

I'm working under the old contract day-to-day along with 13,000 union buddies while the clueless who bought our outfit read the list of takebacks bottom to top on odd days, top to bottom on even days, hoping one of them will sound wonderful to our negotiators.

the instructions we got for mobilization are apt for you while you're wondering how it's going to work out.  fix the cars, yourself if you can.  stock up on canned goods, cleaning supplies, and freezer food.  put the heating oil in the tank now.  pay as many small bills as you can, put as much as you can in savings.  economize.  get the haircut now and shine up the good shoes.

it's a jungle out there, and the big stinky apes rule.  take care of yourselves first, shine up the resume, and brush up on older skills that might be the next buzzword.

and if you find a good deal on a spare set of finals, jump.  you might need 'em in your spare time.