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Wessex crank up

With Enstone on the Saturday and a crank up yesterday, it was a good enginey weekend. There were forty eight engines at Nunney Catch in deepest Somerset, including a first outing for the Lister JP twin driving a triple cylinder water pump, always mesmeric. Paul Chant (the new owner of my Parsons engine) & I had a good chat about it & I look forward to seeing it in action again soon.

I took the ST flat twin again. It always attracts interest & comment, runs all day on a small tank of unleaded and is a pleasant companion in the line up, not too noisy with the sparks fully retarded & the carb a bit rich.

I took along my easel for the first time & put the signs in a picture frame at face height, a great improvement on the grovelling required to read the small print on many exhibits! It was only a fiver at a sale & I recommend the idea to one & all.

I also took along my 1:4 scale Anzani Brevette model as a table exhibit & some aircraft starter magnetos, one driving a plug tester.

John Brooks always contrives to pull something interesting out of his barn to tickle my fancy & this time it was a well preserved WW2 Morse key equipped signal lamp, complete with spare bulb set. Very nice.

John also sold me a very odd device indeed. It has a very well made 6" convex mirror at one end concentrating the output of a small (say 2") round ended, l-o-n-g cathode ray tube which is projected out at a right angle - I'll take some pics later on & would be delighted to hear ideas about its possible use. Finally, a small but heavy electric motor for a whole £1.50. Aircraft quality, but no voltage shown on the plate & a terminal block at the comm end with each connection separate. No doubt to allow different currents to be supplied to the fields etc, but it succumbed to sensible wiring & appears to be 24 volts. No immediate use in mind, but I've already had thirty bob's worth out of fun with it establishing what & how ;o))

An ALCO Featherweight generator all complete was dickered over & purchased - the deal was sealed with a bacon sandwich! - was slid into the boot of the BMW & it only needs a super clean and a coat of khaki paint to restore it to its full glory.

Regards,

Kim Siddorn

May the fourth be with you

Reply to
Kim Siddorn
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"Kim Siddorn" wrote (snip):-

Betcha it's a projection TV unit - called a Schmidt scanner or some such.

Reply to
Nick H

I did wonder that. There is a sticky label deep inside saying "Tested,

2/53".

There is a serial number, but no maker's name - it doesn't look "nice" enough to be military, but I might be wrong ....

Regards,

Kim Siddorn

Reply to
Kim Siddorn

I think you're right Nick-sounds entirely like a Schmidt optical unit. Does it look like one of these Kim?

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Regards

Philip T-E

Reply to
philipte

Well, clever ole' Nick & Philip then ;o)) I KNEW someone would know!

It is indeed the optical unit from a Philips 1800A projector television, circa 1951-3.

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I've dropped the web owner a line to see if he's interested otherwise, I might use the mirror as the basis of a telescope.

Regards,

Kim Siddorn

Only a Biker knows why a dog sticks his head out of a car window.

Reply to
Kim Siddorn

"Kim Siddorn" wrote (snip):-

What a multi-disciplined lot we are! Actually there was one of these lurking amongst the jumble of donated items in my old school physics lab. It was missing the CRT and there was much debate as to what it was at the time - gun sight, some sort of death ray apparatus etc etc - then I saw one in a museum (possibly chalk pits) and for some reason the true identity of the beast stuck with me.

Reply to
Nick H

Kim, are you sure it was from the Philips? It was also fitted to the Decca 1000 projection TV. Unlike the Philips, which was back projection, the Decca projected onto a silvered 6ft x 4ft screen that was either wall mounted or housed in a separate cabinet. It was a black art to set up the optics if they became deranged. If I remember correctly the optics were hermetically sealed to prevent corrosion to the surface silvered mirrors.

The CRT (Mullard MW 6/2) also ran at the lethal EHT voltage of 30Kv, capable of not only throwing you across a room but also of causing subcutaneous burns.

The set had a safety circuit that removed the brightness from the CRT if there was a Frame or Line collapse. Without this the phosphors in the CRT quickly burnt leaving a permanent vertical or horizontal line on the picture. We had a CRT on display in the workshop that had been removed from a Decca

1000 that had been used to display the Test Card for long periods. The Test Card was permanent!
Reply to
Fred

See also:

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Reply to
Fred

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