"starman" wrote in message
...
Home come the visitors to the island were able to leave but not the
castaways? Why didn't the visitors report the location of the island
when they got back to civilization? :-)


Thanks for getting me to clarify an important point. Only the first year of
Gilligan can be properly placed in the Island Noir genre. I know it's hard
to believe, but there are still some people who don't "get it". For them, I
suggest they imagine some cast changes. Picture the Skipper and Gilligan
played by Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. Mr. and Mrs. Howell played
by Edward G. Robinson and Bette Davis. Ginger portrayed by Veronica Lake.
Of course, the Professor would be Robert Mitchum.

With such a cast, the true nature of the island elite would have been
obvious to even the most doltish, thick-headed viewer. Even some TV critics
might have gotten beyond the question, "Howcum they brought so many
cigarettes for a three hour tour?". But casting the castaways as comedic
figures goes even beyond the brilliance of casting Fred MacMurray as Walter
Neff. In this way, we get to see the other islanders as the trusting,
innocent Mary Ann sees them. It's only as we mature, and listen to enough
domestic shortwave radio, that the lies and moral corruption of Mary Ann's
fellow islanders become apparent.

But those later color episodes in which people start showing up? Well,
those episodes are just plain silly.

Frank Dresser

"Frank Dresser" ) writes:
"lsmyer" wrote in message
...

Also, this radio contained some amazing self-generating batteries. They
never ran low, despite the fact that there was no AC plug available for
charging purposes, nor did it have any type of crank-based charging
mechanism. It's possible that the batteries might have been the product of
a
secret military cold-war era attempt at attaining a self-sustaining,
zero-point energy equilibrium.

Ah, that's the easy part. Those 60s transistor radios didn't use much
current. I've got an old Silvertone from that era, and it draws less than
15 mils at low volume settings. It's powered with six D cells, and alkaline
cells would run the radio for two to four hours a day for over a year. Half
an hour a week for a couple of years? Piece o' cake.

That's a good point. QST ran a review of the Baygen windup radio, and pointed
out for the curious that the generator put out very limited power. The
key was a radio that didn't draw much current, and one reason for that
was that the radio put out no more than soemthing like 50mW of audio.

Your point about D cells is also useful. Go back to that vintage, and many
a radio did look like a radio, big and "powerful" so it had the space for
D cells. We've gotten so used to pocket radios that run off 9volt batteries
or a pair of AA cells that we forget that there was a time when much
bigger batteries were part of the radio.

But as has been pointed out, there were various episodes dealing with powering
the radio.

Michael

holy cow!

only 15 mils current pull ?

I imagine that'd last a good while !

The reception was pretty amazing...that is some groundwave!

You may recall that there was a later episode where the professor had
the entire cast sit at a table and stir liquid in coconut shells in
order to "recharge" the batteries that had finally gone dead...

Perhaps they employed this method often between episodes to make it
SEEM like the batteries lasted forever?

Your thoughts???

Dan

PS Mary Ann is the hotter of the two in my book. Dawn Wells was
actually a beauty pageant winner in real life. Hubba Hubba!

"lsmyer" wrote in message ...
Since the mid-1960s, I have searched far and wide to find a radio that had
such good reception as the one on Gilligan's Island.

That incredible DX powerhouse of a radio could regularly pick up US mainland
broadcasters -- KDKA comes to mind -- from its location on a tiny island
located thousands of miles from the US mainland deep in the South Pacific.
Not just at night, mind you, but right in the middle of the day.

Also, this radio contained some amazing self-generating batteries. They
never ran low, despite the fact that there was no AC plug available for
charging purposes, nor did it have any type of crank-based charging
mechanism. It's possible that the batteries might have been the product of a
secret military cold-war era attempt at attaining a self-sustaining,
zero-point energy equilibrium.

I would like to get one of these radios and hopefully some of those
batteries as well. If anybody finds one on ebay, be sure to post it here.
Thanks.

On 6 Nov 2004 23:42:53 -0800, (Dan Gett) wrote:

PS Mary Ann is the hotter of the two in my book. Dawn Wells was
actually a beauty pageant winner in real life. Hubba Hubba!

Ya know, for a 66 year old, she's not too bad either...
(from imdb)

Dawn Wells
Date of birth (location)
18 October 1938
Reno, Nevada, USA

http://www.dawn-wells.com/

OK .... so I'll grant you that Mary Ann has held up well over the years and
many of my friends sure liked the look of her, but she was always just a
little too "girl next door" for me.

Ginger on the other hand looked super-hot and used to send me into
alternating hot and cold flashes.

This debate has been timeless and is the subject of a website where you can
cast your vote. I was aghast to find myself in the minority!! No
accounting for some people's taste in women I guess ... LOL. No ... I've
got it, the vote was rigged!

Lee

Here's the link: http://tbs.com/general/story/0,,36370,00.html

Lee Smith wrote:

OK .... so I'll grant you that Mary Ann has held up well over the years and
many of my friends sure liked the look of her, but she was always just a
little too "girl next door" for me.

Ginger on the other hand looked super-hot and used to send me into
alternating hot and cold flashes.

This debate has been timeless and is the subject of a website where you can
cast your vote. I was aghast to find myself in the minority!! No
accounting for some people's taste in women I guess ... LOL. No ... I've
got it, the vote was rigged!

It must have been the exit polling after leaving her hut...

dxAce
Michigan
USA

Yes Ace, that had to be it. Mary Ann must have used her feminine wiles to
gain unwarranted votes. Who knows went on in the privacy of the hayloft
when she was wearing those plaid shirts and cut-off jeans.

Ginger on the other hand must have been too shy to conduct herself in that
way for something as tawdry as getting a vote.

73 de Lee

"Lee Smith" wrote in message ...

This [Ginger or Mary Ann] debate has been timeless...

I'll say it is. Whenever I set up a new server for a client that includes
the SharePoint company web site, I always start things off by putting
up a survey entitled, "Ginger or Mary Ann?"

The sad thing is that there are beginning to be some people who don't get it.

"Someone" wrote in message
...
"Lee Smith" wrote in message
...

This [Ginger or Mary Ann] debate has been timeless...

I'll say it is. Whenever I set up a new server for a client that includes
the SharePoint company web site, I always start things off by putting
up a survey entitled, "Ginger or Mary Ann?"

The sad thing is that there are beginning to be some people who don't get
it.


all this time its the question that was wrong. it should read; Ginger, Mary
Ann, or both?