I'm pretty much a greenhorn too, and I have to say the capacitor issue gets a little confusing to me as well.

Squirrel boy, one thing I would disagree (in a friendly way) with you is that guys on here are teachers in that people are learning from information you post. There's plenty of folks reading stuff who you'll never meet, see, or ever know about.

Think about a favorite teacher when you were in school. Of course you weren't their only student. They probably taught the same thing, to several classes a day, for years on end. That requires a lot of patience to repeat the same thing over and over again.

I know its frustrating and annoying to you guys that are experienced to answer questions from us newbies all the time. There's probably tens of thousands of posts here and opinions vary even among experts. I haven't seen every post and I don't always know who's right.

Maybe there could be a forum on here just for beginners. There newbies could feel more comfortable asking questions. If the experienced guys want to help out, you could go there and do so and it would be appreciated. If you don't like helping newbies, stay out!

Also, if there were stickies with the basics, you can refer people to them when the same questions get asked instead of having to type it over again. As has been said, there are several guys here that are really good at making videos and some of them already have ones on basics. Maybe they could be listed here too since youtube doesn't have a way to categorized their channels.

Techicolor: have you thought about practicing on radios first? I know your not into them, but there's a lot of similarities. Every Audels book or old TV repairmans course I've seen always started out explaining radios first. If you mess up, there isn't a lot lost. I've had a few ruined radios in my wake. When your done and you don't want to keep them, give them away to friends and family and tell them how great you are at fixin' stuff. The bad ones throw in your worst enemy's yard!