What's that sound? It's 4 Amusement Only, the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. Welcome back to 4 Amusement Only. This is Nicholas Baldridge. Hope everyone had a safe and happy holiday and you're gearing up for New Year's. 2018 should be a very good year. Very good year. I had a lot of fun in 2017. And finishing out the year by fixing up this Chicago coin fox hunt. Been talking about it for a while but quite honestly I haven't had a whole lot of time to work on it for a bit of time here. So this past week or this past two weeks here after the last podcast I went I sat down with my new meter, thanks again to Ryan Claytor, and measured the transformer, took a look at it, and from the beginning, nothing about this transformer hookup made any sense to me. There were a total of five lugs and one was unconnected. I was measuring 6 volts on one of the lugs with my old meter and I said, hmm, okay, 6 volts. And up across lamp sockets I was measuring about 5.5 or so volts. I said, alright, you know, we should be in business here, but the lights weren't lighting. So I took the new meter downstairs, measured the I was at the voltage and it was 30 volts and I said that's kind of weird this is at the transformer and then measured again across the lamp sockets and got zero volts so I knew something was up took a look and there was one wire which was not connected anywhere and it appeared to feed farther up the playfield so Backing up a little bit, I talked about this in the past, but underneath the playfield at the bottom towards the center or, you know, kind of on the right hand side, there's this power distribution center. Instead of Jones plugs, what they did is they took all the 30 volt wires and ran them together into these screw terminals and then screwed them all down in one spot and as long as there's no corrosion, you know, that'll Should work okay and nothing touches anything else and you should be good. Well, unfortunately there were quite a few things which were wrong. A previous technician had taken some wires and put them in the wrong stacks in that power distribution center and then there was this one wire which just wasn't connected anywhere. Well, this brings me to the second thing that didn't really make any sense about the transformer and that's that there was no common. So, every transformer you're going to have a common lug. It's a lug that's going to be common to everything. It's kind of the feedback into the transformer. You have a hot side and then you have what amounts to a common side. Well, using my old meter, I couldn't find the common because everything was measuring these wacky voltages that shouldn't be. So the hot for 30 volts was measuring 30 volts. That made sense. And the common was measuring 6 volts, which didn't make sense. So in reality, that is going to be the common or the return for either 30 volts or 6 volts. the meter was given me false readings. So this wire that was not connected, I figured, well, it must run to that lug that had nothing on it. So, measuring the lug, I got something slightly less than six volts. So I was able If you were to drop from the Jones plug to that lug on the Transformer I was able to get lights back but they were very weak Thetransformer had a problem It just was not powerful enough and I'm not sure that's because it heated up and you know normally aotransformer short would make it too powerful but Something had happened and it had gone open somewhere, at least partially, or... You know, nothing really makes sense about that, but at any rate, it wasn't powerful enough anymore, just didn't have the juice. I happen to have a spare Williams transformer, swapped that in, put it on high tap, Coming soon to support Online Never Billy I had to figure out what was going on with the 30 volt line because with the lamps hooked up and running at 6 volts the line, the feeder line, started heating up. And I believe this is what happened. The feeder line, or rather the hotline for the 6 volts heated up so much that it desoldered itself The first thing that I realized was that the transformer was actually vaporized and this happened because both the 30 volts and the 6 volts run through the same fuse and the 30 volt system had a problem. So looking through the coils, I had suspected that the two step-up coils for, there's one for the replay unit and then one for the scores unit were shorted. And using my old meter, I was getting inconsistent results, but I made the assumption so I desoldered one side. PIN BIN, a little bit of a that the resistance was very low for a coil. It was somewhere between 2 and 3 ohms, which did not seem right. So I got those puppies taken apart and these are coils in a can. They are an old style of coil, which I have to assume was intended to be disposable. You remove them from the machine and then Jennifer Marie Jie大家都 make Pre tsun K acabarbane Now I'll share the measurements and everything with Steve Young and he'll be able to supply those to anybody who happens to need it for one of these very early Chicago coin games. But the coils were a matching set, which was lucky. The first one that I took apart was the score Step-Up Coil. Of course, that's the most important one that fires all the time. Any time that you hit any target or bumper in this game, The bumper or switch that scoreStepUp is gonna fire so looking at the ScoreStepUp coil the can is is pinched closed on either side there's a metal coil sleeve and this metal coil sleeve is built into these two metal caps Now the caps and sleeve come out and there are feeder wires coming out one side of the and those wires are actually the, what would be the lugs of the coil, but this is a lugless design. So, had to vice grip pliers and gently hammer the coils apart, took it apart, and when I actually got it in two pieces, this huge cloud of soot came out of the end of the coil, which is generally not a good sign. Um, so get that out and take a look and the wiring is just burned to a crisp. It is the toastiest coil I've ever seen. Uh, and I've seen burned coils before but there was nothing like this. I mean it was on fire, serious fire. Um, now the good news is the can obviously protected the rest of the game, uh, so I happen to like the design for that but otherwise, uh, what a pain to get that thing apart. So here came the fun part I got this nasty melted mess and I have to figure out how many turns of wire are in this thing So I go through and unwind the entire thing and count the windings And as I'm unwinding it, charred, blackened bits of shellac or whatever was covering the magnet wire was coming off. It just made this horrible mess, and I am thankful that my wife was asleep because I was doing it up in the well lit part of the house instead of downstairs. Shhh, don't tell her. But, got that all taken apart, and just in case anybody else is crazy enough to do this for any other game in the future, just have a notebook handy. And as you're counting, if you ever feel like you might get distracted, write down the number and keep doing so until you've got it. Well, it turned out to be approximately 650 turns of wire, something between 650 and 670. The issue is there were some sections that were badly burned enough that multiple turns came off and I wasn't quite sure. An extra few turns of wire are not going to do any harm. So, hopped on Amazon, ordered some magnet wire, I didn't have any, and waited for that to arrive, and wound a coil. So I did this before I took apart the replay step up. And here's where I made one of... ... Everything's looking great. And I add an electrical tape insulating layer to the outside just in case the coil shorts itself to the outside of the can. Thinkinging I'm very clever, I go ahead and seal it all back up, screw it back to the unit that I took it off of, and solder one side of the coil in. And at this point I decide I'm going to test the machine and make sure that there's been no degradation in functionality. You know, this is a good idea anytime you make any change, and in this case I was really manhandling that unit in order to get that coil off. Uh, it was very, very difficult to get that coil off, uh, because it uses two screws with backing nuts and the nuts were, of course, rusted in place. So, uh, get the coil back on, solder on one side, like I said, turn the game on and immediately the coil locks on and, of course, that shouldn't happen. I'm thinking maybe there's some kind of crazy thing going on. Maybe I accidentally bridged both sides somehow or maybe the other wire was touching something that it shouldn't have. Took a look and I was inducing voltage through the coil through another means. And these units, and this happens in some EM games, but it's pretty interesting that this happened as early as 1940. These units actually have the return or the common wired of the unit. And the switching side happens on one side, but the other side is tied directly to frame. Well, that's great, except in this particular instance, because the coil, the new coil, was not isolated enough. Meaning, there was a piece of metal touching something else that What's the point of playing with a pinball? So, I had to take that all apart. And before I rewound it, I took apart the other one just to see if it was in any better shape. So when I take this other one apart, it's perfect WE allowsовойlo on YouTube The Insulator, which is like a cardboard layer in between the magnet wire and the coil sleeve. That was intact. So, rewound that coil. Came up with approximately 6 ohms, so it was about 50% shorted. And then unwound the other coil that I had previously wound and wound it again. And this time, worked perfectly. So I have both hooked up and everything works Great. With the coils themselves. They pull. Unfortunately, the replay step-up does not let go. And I've got to check and see if it's just a switch adjustment. The switch itself is opening and closing as it should, but it may not be cutting off power to the coil as it should. So I'll have to figure that out. But other than that, there are two springs on that unit which are incorrect. and or week they've been bent and disfigured in the past and in one case a spring head been broken so uh... i'm going to just order some replacement springs and then that should cure that problem and it may cause the uh... to allow the plunger to pull back properly as well we'll have to see but um... That said, this thing is pretty close. So aside from this coil locking on, here's what happens in the game. The bumpers score, the horses advance, those are certain of the bumpers, and there are relays under the playfield which do certain things like, for example, advance all the horses at once. When I fire that particular relay, Certain things happen. In one instance there's a coil which locks on until all the horses have stepped. Unfortunately, for some reason when all the horses step at once this coil will not let go. And I'm not sure if it's because there's a mechanical issue with one of the horses or what exactly is going on. So I've got to Dive back into that and see if I can figure that out but other than that the game is totally functional aside from one socket which is shorted and haven't really dived into that too deeply. I just unhooked the socket and everything else worked fine. So, the intermediate relays which handle scoring and replay step up are working properly and fire when they're supposed to. So, I have no doubt that this game is about 98% complete. Just those couple springs and hopefully that will correct the mechanical issue on the replay unit but I'm going to go through and The way that unit is constructed is a little different than most other units that I've ever encountered. There are two set screws which basically hold the Bakelite disc onto the shaft of this unit. And behind that, this Bakelite disc is the wiper board. The and then the wipers themselves are on a separate disc uh... and then there is uh... a spring between and couple of coils and some springs and various other devices which allow the unit to step up or step down uh... the replay unit is Pretty interesting in the way it's designed. So it's a step up step down unit. It's not a step up reset. And it's designed exactly the same way as the score step up and reset unit, except that it steps down one at a time. And the way it does this is with this The pinball joystick is a little piece of spring steel which basically pushes on the reset pivot arm and prevents it from going all the way open when that coil pulses. It's a pretty interesting setup but it's really pretty finicky mechanically. So the issue that I have right now with step down is that at certain on positions of the disc and it can handle up to something like seventy replays the disc won't step down uh... now it did this vertically just fine it's only when it's horizontal or in it's normal position then it wont do it so i've got something that's binding somewhere it's mechanical and uh... I'll get that fixed and everything should be good there. But uh... Anyway, this game is coming along. All the lamps appear to work. It's almost time for me to reinstall the back glass but I haven't wanted to put the back glass back in until I was certain that uh everything was working just fine and all the lamps are doing what they supposed to do I haven yet verified that because of these coil issues that have happened And that brings me to actually one other problem and that's that one of the relay coils was just totally missing. This particular relay appears to be some kind of intermediate tilt. Uh, but it may have something to do with the gameplay and I'm not certain what. ... ... fixed first. It's getting there. So, that's what's been going on in my EM life. I, uh, ordered a, uh, replacement, uh, plastic for the Line Drive project that I have sitting here. New bat and some new balls. So that should be ready to clean up and get set up here before too much longer. And other than that, I haven't been able to play any games for quite some time. Work has been insane and hopefully things are starting to calm down. We'll see. The building robo-frenzy, you know, the door I mentioned last time is just staring me in the face every time I walk downstairs. I'm hopeful that I can get that wired up with just a few evenings worth of work. There's quite a few wires that have to be run, but it shouldn't be too bad. astronaut, female开始 männkeeperth Legisl posts, not for that its' possible, me sem vocals a said so its talk bingos for a second what's been going on uh... unfortunately I've been unplugged Zimmer coach basically since i got back from your I've uh... I'm keeping up with correspondence, helping people with machines, getting them fixed. And other than that, you know, I haven't really been keeping up with the news or creating any more machines, unfortunately. That is another thing I would like to get back to. But the biggest news of 2017 really has come to a conclusion, and that is United's Serenade. I talked about it at a podcast very early this year. This was discovered, a man messaged on tilt forums of all places, which is sort of a competitive focused forum for pinball. There are other topics of conversation, but most of the discussion revolves around tournaments and competitions and things of that nature for flipper games. So it was very unusual to see somebody start a bingo topic that wasn't me. And even more interesting to see somebody start a bingo topic about a game that nobody knew existed. And that was the... The game that nobody knew existed. It's just fascinating. So this person had had it in his childhood home since he was young. The game was released in the early 70s. This game doesn't appear on any production lists. No bingo guy knew anything about it. Now the United collectors are a pretty small group. There's only a handful of people who really know much about the Uniteds, at least that are kind of public and and uh... out about the uniteds so uh... this was pretty interesting but i ran it through all the usual folks and and nobody had heard of it and uh... it certainly didn't appear anywhere that i was able to discern as it turns out this is a game that had made it all the way to some kind of engineering sample or something uh... Where it had art applied. I mean it has its own unique stencil, it has its own unique back glass and playfield, and the gameplay is actually completely unique. This game has two cards, but you can only qualify one or the other to score, and the numbers on the cards are actually totally different. So you have 1 through 25 on card number 1 and 26 through 50 on card number 2. This is extremely confusing. I mean, just mind-bending. If you're playing card number two, to keep in mind that hole number one is also number 26. I had implemented this game in the multi with the understanding that I had of it. Of course, no schematics or manual are anywhere to be found. But, I was able to get it working and it's a very interesting game. Now I can see why it probably didn't go very far. You know, if they produced a handful of these, it wouldn't be surprising. Or if they produced, you know, maybe a dozen or more, it wouldn't be super surprising. But I would imagine that this is one of the only ones that's left. Because the gameplay is very For those same reasons, when I play serenade in the multi, it's hard to keep Car number two straight. When simply working a certain number of minutes, I always get to make the next left hand card. Anyway, the layout is different, which means the flat edge of the molding is flensed and This topic now makes a category onlyaz出 vle Allegiras a tricky. You'll get three, four, maybe even five in a row, but you won't be able to collect. So this game has extra balls and it's got a spotted number feature. Now the spotted number spots on both cards at the same time, meaning if you land in hole number one, it's going to light one and twenty-six at the same time, whether or not you have card A or B The game is very unique, you know, it's very unusual. I thought of a few people who might be interested and suggested Bingo Butch. And Butch is one of the largest collectors of United games. I interviewed him just a few episodes back. He's been operating for a very long time and even operated bingos a long time ago. So who better to have this game than somebody who's trying to amass a collection of all the The end of the year, the game was up and running for the Christmas present. Get together and Butch had the game up and running for his Christmas present. And his son Mike did the work. And Mike is a very good technician. So it's in good hands and it's very exciting that a bingo guy has this game. The game is a game. And I'm hopeful that more will come of that later on. For example, information about the score and Instruction cards, you know, seeing if I have it implemented totally correctly. And now that he's got it running, of course I can ask him questions about the gameplay and just verify my assumptions here. Most of the game was programmed in the Multi, taking into account the back glass and what I could see of the Score and Instruction cards. I'm not sure what the actual answer is, but I think it's better than guessing. So if there's some situation where you can score on both cards at the same time, for example, that would completely change the nature of the game and would make it, in my opinion, a game with more staying power. I find that it's just too hard for the casual player to make much headway with. But what a great story. I mean, something that nobody knew existed at the beginning of this year. By the end of this year, it's in great hands. So congratulations to Bingo Butch and Mike and, you know, great job getting it fixed up. Winner is the future of the game. Winner is the future of the game. Today's game is May of 1939's Jenko Airport. This game has beautiful artwork. It's 1939, the artwork is extremely detailed. There's full artwork covering the entire playfield and back glass and the playfield for this game, this was apparently according to a report that I'll read shortly, a very popular game. And the playfield design is such that there are tons of spring bumpers, 16 is what I count. But the spring bumpers aren the main attraction here at least at the top of the playfield At the top of the playfield there are three lanes marked two one and four and down at the mid playfield there are two lanes marked three and five or rather five and three the idea is that you hit each one of these lanes in sequence and then the next time that you hit one of the lanes it will score whatever number in thousands you made it up to in the rotation so for example If you on your next ball make number two, then the next time you roll through any lane you get two thousand points and so on and so forth. Once you have all five lit or unlit as the case is, once you've rolled through all five lanes in sequence, then the four bumpers at the bottom which are arranged in a propeller fashion A thousand points per hit. In the center of these four bumpers is a hole marked Replay, and if you manage to land in that, the ball comes back to you to play again without having to start a new game. So this is like the ball return in a bingo or any other game that has a return play feature This game is, I mentioned the very detailed artwork, but there are backlit items which are not clearly visible until you happen to complete part of the sequence or earn some points. So your base values of points are actually illustrated within clouds and beams of light that are up on top of a building. This is the New York skyline. The Statue of Liberty's Torch Shining and a boat sailing through In the foreground at the airport you have spotlights which are shining in three different directions and in two of the directions are different point values. There's a zeppelin flying in the air and that has one of the point values as well. Your larger point values are arrayed at the top. Used for cauldron kickboxing, Middle Você Próorth With Adam and to on the left hand side freedom for on the right in findings in the airport right in the center down below that you have a small single-engine plane uh... which appears to be taking off and but to the right in that airplane there is the word tilt so now that makes obviously if you're tilted below that you have Crowds of people which are uh... disembarking from a two-engine plane and uh... there's a man in in the foreground uh... who is going to meet somebody who's waving to him there's a couple of ladies on the right hand side uh... one appears to be a pilot or service woman and uh... she is meeting uh... this man in the foreground in a green coat and to the right of the guy in the green coat There are two rounded shapes and they actually contain your replays. Single digits are in the shape on the right hand side in green and to the left of that are double digit replays. So this game can track up to 79 replays or more likely seventy or seventy some before it stops. So this game should have a knockoff button somewhere underneath. For a game that tracks replays that high, there is almost certainly a way to knock the replays off. I don't know that for a fact, but it sure seems likely. So let's look at the playfield artwork itself. These Genco playfields are very detailed and beautiful from this time period. Up at the top you have the word airport. This is like a game, this is almost a transition period where the game's title is still being drawn on the top of the playfield. Just a few short years away and the title would be displayed on the back glass instead. But here we're in kind of the end of this era and the title is arrayed right at the top center of the playfield. Down below that you have airplanes which are flying through the sky. There are five different airplanes in various depths from the viewer. and uh... in different heights as well below that you have the titular airport and uh... that double engine plane from the back glass uh... there are a couple people walking beside that a person is picking up the bags uh... and either about to load them or is unloading them from the plane and you have uh... man and a woman in the bottom center and to the right of them Looks like a pilot or airport official with another woman who might be another worker at the airport. The airport has a tower with a windsock on it and to the right of that is actually the manufacturer's name. So, Genko is shown pretty prominently on the playfield there. Just beautiful. The artwork it's The blue even though it would certainly be easy to do that when you're drawing a sky I just imagine I am no artist as I've mentioned many times before but the use of clouds on this playfield is is pretty wise I think because as I say it time being extremely easy to any just having completely blue field and real also Mary ball Further The 옷 initially on prev氧9 it is a wise choicebrings ganz chaps and last responder banatapp Prefield There are lamps underneath some or possibly all of the spring bumpers and it's unclear from the photos on IPDB. But for each of the numbers in the sequence from the rollover there are light towers, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, and those are illuminated at the start of the game. The very pretty kind of a clever tie into the theme signaling lights those lamp towers should have a rubber on them and that will bounce the ball or deflect the ball in interesting ways Other rubber encapsulated item. And... Obviously if I was playing these games new, I probably would have gotten sick of them, but they're arrayed on the edges of the playfield and they provide a really interesting bounce to the ball when you fire a ball and land them on a flag spring. It's almost like a flipper in some instances because of the energy which is imparted to that flag spring and then in turn imparted back to the ball in order to fling it away. Depending on how you land on them, some really interesting things can happen with the ball that you really wouldn't expect just from the appearance of these springs. And then as is typical for games this time, the playfield is surrounded with springs as well. So, again, just a gorgeous game for the time. It looks really fun and I'll leave you with a really thinly disguised as an article, a little note in billboard here. Genco's Airport is flying high, Chicago, June 17. With a long and profitable record already behind it, Genco's newest game, Airport, is still so much in demand that the factory has maintained a peak production on the game and the indications are that the game will continue to go so far as to produce a hit game, remarked Dave Gensberg, Genco official, but it's an extra pleasure to manufacture a game like Airport, Which is continuing to receive acclaim from every distributor, jobber and operator. Franchibrance is a very popular and popular game, and it is a very popular game. It is very highly intrigued by its rotation light, rotation scoring principle and the absorbing action of the ball. It is a very popular and popular game, and it is a very popular game, and it is a very popular game. For amusement Only Podcast at gmail.com or you can call me on the bingoes line which is 724 bingoes 1724 246 4671 You can listen to me on Google Play Music. You can follow me on Instagram at bingo podcast or you can listen to me on my website which is for amusement only dot libsyn dot com Thank you very much for listening. Have a happy new year and safe and I will talk to you next time.