Short Wave Radio
This is a dream I remember well, because of the trick it played on me. I had been engaged in the construction of a short wave receiver of a rather simple design, but things were much more difficult in the days of vacuum tubes than they are today. Building an electronic device required much more than plugging a couple of little black things into a circuit board and and attaching the speaker wires.
I was making it from instructions in a book, and had bought separate parts, not a kit, so there were many opportunities for things to go wrong. They did. I was up well into the morning fiddling with it, trying to get it to work. Finally, I could work no longer and went to bed with the problem yet unsolved.
Begin:
I was sitting on my bedroom floor, working on my little short wave radio. I unplugged things and replugged them, unsoldered wires and resoldered them, tested it in various ways and examined it from all angles. Finally, I determined that a variable capacitor on the front panel was shorting to the panel, and that it shouldn't. I undid wires and other things so I could remove the panel and remove the capacitor from the panel. I then provided the needed insulation and reassembled the whole thing. Upon retesting, it worked, at least reasonably well.At this point, I woke up and examined the radio. Sure enough, the capacitor was shorting to the panel. I unsoldered wires and undid all the things I needed to undo to remove the capacitor, provided the insulation, and reassembled the whole thing. Upon retesting, it worked, at least reasonably well.
At this point I really woke up, and had the whole process to go through a third time. This was more than I could face, so I left it and did something else instead. When I returned to it, I found the capacitor did indeed short to the front panel, and went through the whole hassle of fixing it. Unfortunately, this was not the only problem, so it never did work very well. It is just as well - I found soon enough there is nothing in this world more boring than listening to radio amateurs talk to each other.