Radford FM tuners - UK Vintage Radio Repair and Restoration Discussion Forum

GW4FRX · 6th Jul 2019, 8:03 am

With a view to possibly acquiring one for restoration, I spent some time recently looking for information about the later Radford FM tuners. But there seems to be remarkably little published material. There are a few photographs of the FMT3 and a schematic but nothing at all about the FMT4 although one item of Radford literature mentions it. Anecdotally there was an FMT5 prototype but again no hard information.

Does anyone have direct experience of any of these tuners and were any contemporaneous reviews published? Or were they simply not popular (or not very good)?

Marconi_MPT4 · 6th Jul 2019, 5:14 pm

Have you taken a look at the Yahoo group "Radford Electronics Files and Database" located here https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/radfordfiles/info ?

However you will need to apply for membership. Quite a few years ago I was able to find much needed information regarding my Radford LDO4.

Cheers
Rich

GW4FRX · 6th Jul 2019, 6:53 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marconi_MPT4

Have you taken a look at the Yahoo group "Radford Electronics Files and Database" located here https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/radfordfiles/info ? However you will need to apply for membership. Quite a few years ago I was able to find much needed information regarding my Radford LDO4.

I used to belong to that group and indeed contributed to it from time to time. However, since Yahoo became part of Oath it seems chiefly interested in hoovering up as much personal data as possible and bombarding members with irrelevant and intrusive advertising. The so-called 'dashboard' is a joke. It is effectively impossible to stop it setting tracking cookies and running odd-looking scripts which can't be blocked.

So I no longer belong to any Yahoo groups.

GW4FRX · 8th Jul 2019, 2:19 pm

Answering my own question, Mike Solomons tells me that he has only ever seen one FMT3 and that the FMT4 did not proceed beyond the mock-up stage. He has not heard of the FMT5.

So it seems that the only successful Radford FM tuners were the FMT1 and 2, and Mike commented that setting up the latter is “extremely difficult.”

6th Jul 2019, 8:03 am	#1
GW4FRX Pentode Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Shrewsbury, Shropshire, UK. Posts: 149	Radford FM tuners With a view to possibly acquiring one for restoration, I spent some time recently looking for information about the later Radford FM tuners. But there seems to be remarkably little published material. There are a few photographs of the FMT3 and a schematic but nothing at all about the FMT4 although one item of Radford literature mentions it. Anecdotally there was an FMT5 prototype but again no hard information. Does anyone have direct experience of any of these tuners and were any contemporaneous reviews published? Or were they simply not popular (or not very good)?

6th Jul 2019, 5:14 pm	#2
Marconi_MPT4 Heptode Join Date: Mar 2011 Location: Dorset, UK. Posts: 522	Re: Radford FM tuners Have you taken a look at the Yahoo group "Radford Electronics Files and Database" located here https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/radfordfiles/info ? However you will need to apply for membership. Quite a few years ago I was able to find much needed information regarding my Radford LDO4. Cheers Rich __________________ To an optimist a glass is half full; a pessimist half empty; an engineer twice as big as need be!

8th Jul 2019, 2:19 pm	#4
GW4FRX Pentode Join Date: Aug 2005 Location: Shrewsbury, Shropshire, UK. Posts: 149	Re: Radford FM tuners Answering my own question, Mike Solomons tells me that he has only ever seen one FMT3 and that the FMT4 did not proceed beyond the mock-up stage. He has not heard of the FMT5. So it seems that the only successful Radford FM tuners were the FMT1 and 2, and Mike commented that setting up the latter is “extremely difficult.”