Page 17 - MFW June 2025

Musings of a mature & possibly
Musings of a mature & possibly
Musings of a mature & possibly

over ripe Modeller
over ripe Modeller
over ripe Modeller
Bob Ingles

The Catalyst
Reading with some interest a recent article in the fliers
world by Barry Lenox On retrofitting legacy transmitters ratio or simply variations
with modern 2.4 GHZ RF sections I mentally retraced this between the time on as
very exercise that I had previously undertaken some time opposed to the time off
past, I also thought that perhaps there may be some was which in turn supplied
interest in recounting the path that over a large number of varying degrees of power
years had taken me to that point. to either an actuator as
mentioned or a small
The beginning e l e c t r i c m o t o r t h a t
Having completed a fairly lengthy apprenticeship on oscillated back and forth
control line during my later school s & early adolescent thereby through a homemade wire cage transmitted the
years in the mid 1960’s I then as per a large number of movement to rudder and elevator in varying degrees of
young men moved on to cars and girls, having only flapping, slightly difficult to describe and somewhat
survived that period and settled into marriage and family spastic to observe but a clever innovation by some bright
in the early 70’s my thoughts once again turned to model people to circumvent the shortcomings of single channel,
aircraft but with the added advantage of control by radio, of course after that everything went smoothly yeah right,
sadly a real commercially produced Digital Proportional through financial necessity a fairly rocky path had been
R/C set was well outside even the most unrealistic budget chosen and over the period it took to finally arrive at a
forecast (around the price of a new & at that time exciting sort of working system I contemplated a good number of
Colour TV set) times the old saying about fools learning by experience.

Single Channel The process
Casting around among my Given that I now had a sum of parts a kind of plan & an
friends and acquaintance expected outcome it was on with the build the Pixie Tx
a used OS pixie was was pressed into service coupled to a switching circuit
acquired but oh dear the from a simple & “fool proof” magazine circuit along with
business of single channel an alloy box I had fabricated plus a single stick unit once
with all of its very real again bent up from alloy & the ball unit from a roll on
shortcomings very quickly deodorant unit, kinda crude but surprisingly effective, the
c o o l e d m y a r d o u r , pixie wasn’t prepared to play nicely so was abandoned in
thankfully I had discovered favour of the latest state of the art magazine derived
in my workplace an older Simple simule Tx with the switcher added and a
kindred spirit who had an lightweight and miniature Rx (around the size of half a
enormous collection of block of butter) that thankfully I was able to build entirely
Grid Leak, American from locally available components, this was of the greatly
Radio Control News and superior superhet design meaning that it could be safely
R C M & e m a g a z i n e s used in a group and would not suffer interference from
among these gems I found other Transmitters something that was not always the
a l o w c o s t a n s w e r case with early single channel equipment.
Galloping Ghost, all I really needed was a switching
circuit thankfully provided in one of said magazines and Whilst lack of judgement may have been an issue at
by my very good fortune my work colleague also found in times enthusiasm never waned and despite any number
his collection a Rand actuator the very thing required to of issues that cropped up the way forward while slow was
provide kinda 3 channel control from a single channel always ongoing not the least because of encouragement
radio. and possibly amusement from those more senior in the
modelling world.
Ghosting along
This was my introduction to Galloping Ghost or as it was I had been gifted a trainer (a smaller version of a smog
often know “the poor man’s proportional” This was a hog call a Rattler still available as a plan from outerzone)
system where the AM signal was turned on and off in a from one of the club instructors and now that an operating
controlled fashion in what was known as the mark space system was up and running what could possibly go
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