Does anyone here remember what was the precursor to the Philips Radionic series?
I am thinking of about 1963 which is a few years before the Philips X20 et seq came about.
I lusted after one of those kits but with 5 of us brothers and sisters, the Xmas budget limited each of us to Xmas presents costing £1 only and the electronics kit was about £3.
I lusted after the plastics moulding kit thingy
and I wanted done of these....1961
I made one or two Heathkit things - the digital clock comes to mind, one of these
I built one of those in the late 70's still have it on in the garge shack......
go to 2.33...It has the famous digit flicker ...thought it was my fault building it but they all have it ......
shame
I didn't and have been resetting mine for 43 years....tee hee
I seem to remember the can type transistors in these sets had "fragile" legs not really designed for reinserting in the springs used as connectors. A leg would break off and they were very expensive to replace.
It was Dusty Springfield with me.
Bill
I had a Trix electrical set (1950 ish).
Radionics, was what I had, this was a large Perspex sheet like a pegboard with a leg on each corner, indeed there were two. All the components were mounted on plastic bases with 6ba brass studs that went through the holes in the peg board, and were connected by various lengths of brass strip using nuts. If you needed to hop over, simply use the top of the pegboard. It took you all the way from Crystal set to superhet with push pull output stage, and all the way from simple gates to binary arithmetic using small torch bulbs in bistable circuits linked to do the division.
I even made an am radio transmitter for medium wave which modulated a driver stage and hence did not fm. I had to get some custom bits put together like power transistors on bases of course for the latter, but hi is was in the days of germanium so accidents did happen due to finger trouble with the brass strip wiring, but it thought me a lot. Even though it was big, I could make a circuit with an OC170 that could receive air band signals, it was as wide open as a barn door, selectivity whats that? Grin. Brian
Later on I built the Mohican and their mains short wave radio , the one using mosfets. Both worked, but both did have design flaws both in the dial drive mechanism. The Mohican should have had struts to hold the front panel rigid as it would wander off tune when you flexed the front panel by using controls etc, and the Sw set had the cheapest most crappy slow motion drive using a bit of string I'd ever encountered. The pointer slipped the drive slipped and in the end I took the whole front off and fitted a real slow motion drive to the thing. I have also built an air de ioniser, which basically was a whole ladder of capacitors with the mains at one end and a spike at the other which fizzed loudly and could give you a tingle if you touched it. Lots of power supplies and light controllers, drill controllers stupid robot controllers. and I do miss that now I have no sighted, but it was good while it lasted. Brian
I think the Radionics company in Three Bridges made my brass strip one and it was hard wearing. Tandy used to sell a breadboarding system with springs, but they were notorious for bad connections and crackling. Brian
Well, she was gay anyway, so probably not likely to be available. Brian
Does anyone recall that article in one of the annuals from a comic where they taught people the basics of electromagnetism using a compass, no the ones that point north. some wire, a 9v battery and a magnet and some paper clips? Have to say, the battery never lasted very long, as you might imagine!
I did make a light transmitter once built into a Ever Ready Lantern torch, just behind the reflector. However the level of modulation was very low, as the thermal issues in a filament meant that as soon as you could see the light flickering the thing sounded very distorted. I guess these days leds might be better if they are in fact driven by dc. The other snag of course was the aiming and the limit of range in daylight particularly as the other end either had an orp12 or a phototransistor. Brian
In message <ro4141$qo2$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, gareth evans snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com writes
I had the Philips Electronic Engineer kit, then, later, the add on kit. There were similar kits by Tri-ang, then the Inventor series which was made by Lionel (the train people) in the US, and sold here by Tri-ang under licence. I had the Bell telephone kit. All good fun at the time, but no real long term interest.
On the other hand, I still have, and use, Bayko, Meccano, Dinky and Hornby Trains. Rather more now than I received as a child :-)
I had a Philips Radionic series, I even read the manual about how transistors worked. It was OK, a bit dull by modern standards.
...but as you say, I loved Meccano, and longed for extra kits.
My own son showed no interest in Meccano at all, bastard!
I've got a Vellerman one. The numeric display is made up of lots of individual LEDs - rather than numberic LED chips. Could be because large enough ones weren't available then. Built into the kitchen. Toggles between time and date and room temperature. But it does have provision for battery backup.
In 1965, as a leaving present when my exchange visit to France came to an end, I was given a French No 3 set.
Then somebody up the road gave me the remains of his grandfather's Meccano which included 3 out of the 4 Windmill sails.
You've destroyed my dream
Bill
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