Climax digital equipment

[chlluk]

Hi All
I wondered what has happened to all the sets of Climax digital radio, Cant find one anywhere.
Climax famous for its various servos did make an outfit I'm sure.
Clive

[Mike_K]

Clive

There are not many older sets left around as I suspect not many were made in the first place, I bought the only one I ever saw come up for sale and I was looking for 30 years!

Many UK manufacturers from the 50's and 60's were quite small, effectively cottage industries, manufacturing in small quantities or as a side line to other product ranges. The performance of the early sets left something to be desired and as larger companies introduced more modern gear, many early sets were consigned to the bin. In the 80's I rescued RCS, Horizon, Staveley and Swan sets from the skip (literally) of friends who wanted the space. And when other club members heard I was after old sets I got a few dozen more. In fact the first ever radio I got, an OS Pixie MK1 was given to me rather than it being binned- there just wasn't any value for single channel super-regen sets in the early 70's. Retro radio gear was at give away prices on eBay until a few years back, the postage on most radio's was more than the transmitter. How things have changed since Shaun and Phil started their singlechannel.co.uk site and Shaun started his RCM&E column. But it is nice to have others with the same interest, so I'm not complaining

If you want to see one in the flesh and live near Al's Hobbies in Milton Keynes, have a look in the display cabinet at the shop, the last time I was there, there was a nearly new Climax transmitter on display, part of Ali Snr's collection. And he won't sell it, I've asked.

Cheers

Mike

[chlluk]

Thanks for the info Mike, I have an early Teleradio 4 system in dreadful order. Think the soldering was done with an iron in a forge . I'm sure it must have worked originally. The other outfit i'm trying to find was also a self build I think , a Zircon, only seen one of them.
Clive

[Pchristy]

On the subject of obscure radio systems.....

Does anyone else remember "Nucleonic Instruments"? It was a 2+1 analogue system, similar in function to the original FlightLink, but had a rather odd looking transmitter! The single stick was on a fairly large ball that sat on the flat front of the Tx, rather than being recessed, like most sticks of the time.

It was advertised quite a lot in the small ads at the back of the mags for a year or two, before disappearing, and IIRC used Climax servos. I also seem to recall a magazine (RCM&E?) doing a feature on it - and the model they used during development. It was a special Veron Robot, with an extra panel added to each wing to improve the wing loading for this fairly heavy gear. (They were ALL heavy back then! ) I seem to recall that Veron actually offered this as an option for a while on Robot kits, as a result.

Never saw one in the flesh, but what a rarity that would make!

--
Pete

[chlluk]

Hi all
Would have liked to have seen that strange radio. I did have an RCS Tetraplex which ended up in Perth Australia with Brian Mercer who has sadly passed. looked forward to his daily email and list of swops.
Clive

[GarydNB]

A clubmate of mine got Brian's entire radio collection....won't part with any of it....

[chlluk]

He must have the Tetraplex then. Brian had a huge collection of the rare and special. We would try and do a swop or two each month. Everything happened so quick.
Clive

[Shaun]

A clubmate of mine got Brian's entire radio collection....won't part with any of it....

That's a shame.. I've been after a Tetraplex for the museum collection for years..

Shaun

[chlluk]

The Tetraplex had problems in the tx Rf section. It was better that Brian had it to work on he had the skills. It was about that time that he was taken ill so may not have had chance to sort it out.
Clive

[chlluk]

Moving forward in the search for old systems I'm on the hunt for the early skyleader digital systems with the open sticks and tin can servos. Anybody seen one
Clive