small valves

[Joe R.]

At 08:14 AM 4/22/05 +0200, you wrote:
>
>>> Some mil gear (eg PRC-41) has very small ceramic tubes -not sure if 
>>> they are quite as small as the Nuvistor but they must be close- 
>>> likewise some hearing aid amp tubes were pertty damn small as well.
>
>And don't forget the first generation of R/C receivers intended for use in
>model airplanes. They needed something small, lightweight, battery-powered
>and inexpensive, so voila - miniaturized valves. I can't claim to have seen
>one "in the flesh" yet, but I have a hobbyist book on what they used to call
>"micro-electronics" in the mid-50s (ooh, printed circuit boards instead of
>solder lug strips!) which shows a device about the size of a packet of
>cigarettes with several such valves directly soldered onto a board with the
>wires coming out of them.
>
>Anybody here been R/C-ing back then?

   I was. I kept one of my tube type RC planes for many years but finally
lost it when my mother moved while I was away in the service. I bought it
second hand in about 1963. It and two other OLD planes disappeared during a
garage sale. She says that she didn't sell them but they disappeared none
the less. One was a hand built contol line model of a P-51 that my father
built dring WW II. I really hated to lose that one. I was lucky in that I'd
taken the engines out of all of them and taken them with me. I still have
them, an O&R .23, a DeLong .30 and a McCoy something. All are original
spark ignition engines.  FWIW I do still have the "Little Stik" RC plane
that I built in Thailand in 1974. It's been ALL over the world.

   Joe


>
>cheers
>
>-- 
>Arno Kletzander
>Stud. Hilfskraft Informatik Sammlung Erlangen
>www.iser.uni-erlangen.de
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