Some old and not so old Transmitters, Transceivers and Accessories

Click on the thumb-nail below to hear another interesting bit of radio history.

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My Ham Radio equipment is on a another page

Uniden Washington 27MHz CB Transceiver - this one has been given away in working condition

Found another interesting item at the HRSA auction, bought it for $5.00 for the microphone.

Vertex Standard VX-2500U

While we are on the subject of HELP, I have bought the software and the cable to re program a Vertex Standard VX-2500U UHF CB radio ?. Now can this U version be reprogrammed to be a CU version on the 70cm Ham band ? When I download the data from the radio it will only let me input frequencies from 450MHz, not the Ham band frequencies of 420 to 470MHz. Can it be done with a change inside the radio ?

This one had been screwed up and would only operate on low power. Looks like someone has tried to reprogram it to get more channels and had made a mess of it. The CE52E software has allowed me to change that and to correct where the CB channels had been messed up.

Contact me via email at: vk5srp@wia.org.au

Radio Corporation RC8 HF Transceiver

Rees Mace ET 344 life boat transmitter

Now this is a real bit of history, it was fitted to the Life Boats of Merchant Marine ships during the Second World War. Rees Mace became Pye Communications soon after the War.

You can see how the cam generates SOS three times per revolution. I do not know how it actually workes. It looks to me as though the spring was pre would and turning the handle one revolution started the transmission by setting the cam rotating for one revolution. The tubes are a VR66 as the oscillator and two 807 in parallel in the output.
There are two sets of tubes, one set in use and the other as spares. The power supply has a 12 Volt vibrator "in use" and a spare.

Here is a higher resolution circuit diagram

Does anyone out there know anything about this item ?. I have searched the web and cannot find any information on it.

Pye VHF AM base station

Pye VHF Transmitter TG-368 s/n 432

The companion Pye VHF Receiver RG-57 s/n 476

These two items turned up in a small 19 inch rack with a TCA R5223 communications receiver. I was only interested in the R2553, I helped assemble them as an apprentice at Philips (TCA) almost a life time ago. Looking at the coils it must have been a low band two way radio base station. The crystal in the Transmitter is 8.85 MHz and in the Receiver, 11.2 MHz

I am looking for more definitive information on these.

AWA Skyphone Air Band (108 to 128 MHz) AM Transceivers - Have given these to an Aircraft museum April 2016

Codan 7208 Mk2B Antenna Tuner

I asked Ian Wall, founder of Codan, about this item and here is his answer:
Gosh! You are seeking information about a product originally designed in 1972 and up-dated to a Mk2 version and up-dated again to Mk2B so you will understand it is very hard to find anything at all. So far I have found the schematic A3 04-00794 - not the original but a TIFF file created when (I believe) the original paper drawings were abandoned.

It was intended for use with our 100W PEP Transceivers installed on boats/ships and could match the 50 Ohm impedance of the radio to a variety of antennas having different impedances at their feed points. The Load switch SW1 dealt with the resistive component of the antenna by selecting the appropriate winding on T1 whilst the reactive component was handled by the variable inductor L1 and additional inductor L2 or, alternatively, by capacitors selected by Sw2. Resistors R2...R5 are bleeders preventing static build up on the antenna when the series capacitors were selected. The meter measured the antenna current and the knobs were twisted to achieve a maximum reading.

Ian also sent me the circuit diagram. If anyone else can add anymore info, please do.

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Written by and Copyright, Phil. Storr © Last updated 27^th May 2016