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Barrie Russell

As a youth like many I built and flew Free flight and Control So what to do about it one might ask.
line and had no experience in RC, but still remember
awing over the huge ED ground based transmitter box of Well, fortunately, with the right friends there is a way, and
batteries and valves with a tall aerial etc sitting in Steven’s after spending a few nights in Christchurch with Barry
Bike Shop window here in Napier in the early 1950’s, and and Di Lennox a few of months back the solution
then seeing the late Jack Godfrey flying his “Huge” RC became obvious. After delving into Barry’s workshop
Rudder Bug somewhere at a field in Hastings! complex and talking and talking and listening and talking
more, it became obvious that here was the answer, and
I came back to the hobby in the mid-1980’s when a school with some surreptitious manipulation Barry came up
mate John Clarke, invited me out to Highway 50 to a club trumps. I am presently in possession (on loan I must
meeting and I was hooked. By then proportional RC was stress) of a Futaba FT-3A single channel Transmitter
in and has just got better, culminating in today’s digital from the early 1960’s now converted to 2.4ghz. At the
2.4ghz systems. We still have a few Rip Van Winkles in same time, Barry was doing a similar conversion on an
the club who can relate back to those early days but OS Pixie Tx from the 1960’s so maybe we can go pylon
they’re mostly just memories now and it seems a shame racing together .. Yeah Right !
not to experience those early thrills and spills before
shaking off this earthly coil. Here for your edification and interest is Barry Lennox’s
account of those transmitter conversions.
NEW LAMPS SPECIAL EDITION

FOR
FUTABA FT-3A
FROM OLD & OS PIXIES

Barry Lennox

This was an exercise in converting some very old S/C modern version The Pixie pushbutton does not have a
transmitters from the 1960’s into a 2.4GHz spread very good feel in any case, but the Futaba has a nice micro
spectrum version with an electronic encoder. Why? switch.
Because you can, and it’s great to see 60 year old
technology getting a new lease of life. Anyway, there were Then the following parts are installed....
two, the very small OS Pixie and the somewhat larger An RF transmitter module. I used the Lemon, as they are
Futaba FT-3A. The Pixie is so small that it can probably more readily available and cheaper than FrSky, plus the
only fit a 2S LiPo at 200 mAH. The Futaba can hold an 800 service and post costs from Lemon are very good. And it
mAH one. comes with a comprehensive manual in fluent English! A
big plus these days. See https://lemon-rx.com/

So what’s the process? Firstly you clean it up if required,
removing any corrosion and dirt, remove everything
except the on-off switch and the push-button. Sadly, in the
case of the OS Pixie the push-button is almost impossible
to remove off the PCB so it has to be replaced with a

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