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Vintage Amateur and Military Radio Amateur/military receivers and transmitters, morse, and any other related vintage comms equipment.

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Old 6th May 2019, 1:06 pm   #1
camtechman
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Default Star-Lite "Flagship" TF-853 WT's.

I apologise if this post is in the wrong section but I can only find scant information on this model.

It's of Japanese manufacture and sold by Star-Lite Electronics Corp New York. A couple of lesser WT's
by this manufacturer are listed on R.Morg but are aimed at casual/ toy use.

I have a pair of the TF-853 types and, in my opinion, were aimed at semi to professional use. (See pic below):

If you can help me, I'd be most grateful to hear from you, especially where I could obtain at least a
schematic diagram, and better still a service manual.


One can only hope.

Many Thanks, Tony.
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Old 9th May 2019, 1:21 pm   #2
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Default Re: Star-Lite "Flagship" TF-853 WT's.

Assume these are 27Mhz?

They do look very high end, certainly not the traditional 4 transistor type with one transistor used as a transmitter / a super-regen receiver. The transistor count (14?) is high enough for them to have a proper superhet receiver and discrete audio amplifer, possibly even a respectable power output - the battery type will be the best clue to that.

'Star-Lite' is almost certainly just a badge, I would imagine these were sold with a number of brand names emblazoned on them.

Any chance of taking one apart for some images? Someone may recognise the insides.
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Old 9th May 2019, 9:50 pm   #3
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Default Re: Star-Lite "Flagship" TF-853 WT's.

SiriusHardware


Yep, it takes 8 (4x4 AA Batteries) per unit and each has 14 transistors.

There is a channel switch which gives 27.065MC or "27.085MC

I tried taking one apart and even, after removing all case fixing screws, I couldn't get the casing apart & so, I'll give a try tomorrow and I'll report back in a day or two.

Thanks for now

Tony
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Old 9th May 2019, 10:24 pm   #4
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Default Re: Star-Lite "Flagship" TF-853 WT's.

An interesting choice, channels 9 and 11 respectively. In their home market channel 9 was designated and well observed as the 'Emergency' channel - for a long time, volunteer members of a national organisation undertook to monitor channel 9 as widely as possible. This was long before the general availability of mobile phones, so it was an admirable aim.

I spent a good half hour trawling through images of vintage walkie talkies and while I found hundreds of wonderfully evocative pictures of sets, some of which I used to own myself, I did not (so far) find any which looked like yours, with or without the Star-Lite branding.

Are you just looking for the info for completeness, or is there a fault on one of the units?

One thing I can tell you is that equipment of this type / this period virtually always had the circuit diagram on the inside rear cover of the user manual, so if you can locate a user manual, you may also find that you have located a circuit diagram.

The battery power - a bank of AA cells rather than a single PP3 - suggests the possibility of decent output power, maybe one or two watts.
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Old 10th May 2019, 5:50 pm   #5
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Default Re: Star-Lite "Flagship" TF-853 WT's.

Are you just looking for the info for completeness, or is there a fault on one of the units?


A bit of both 1} Being a 'completionist' ….no doubt most of us are LOL.
2) I've tried one out and it seems non functional and I'll try the other one tonight.
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Old 10th May 2019, 6:04 pm   #6
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Default Re: Star-Lite "Flagship" TF-853 WT's.

Possibly a silly question, but are the RX / TX crystals (probably one pair per channel) actually present?

The high end / high power ones often had a removable hatch through which you could get to the (plug in) crystals so they could be removed and replaced with crystals for another channel - these would have been available as an option from the distributor in exactly the same way as pairs of radio control frequency crystals were available for R/C gear.
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Old 10th May 2019, 6:25 pm   #7
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Default Re: Star-Lite "Flagship" TF-853 WT's.

Are the RX / TX crystals (probably one pair per channel) actually present?
Often had a removable hatch through which you could get to the (plug in) crystals

Sorry, couldn't find any external access for crystals.

Tomorrow, I've set aside the whole day to remove the rear casing.

Will update and report.

Here's a couple of recent pics.

Tony
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Old 20th May 2019, 8:20 pm   #8
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Default Re: Star-Lite "Flagship" TF-853 WT's.

Sorry for not responding sooner but, due to old age, doctor & hospital appointments called.

I've finally got round to removing the cases but no internal circuit diagram. However, here are some internal pics.

Note the crystals are hard wired and soldered to the pc. I've marked up one pic with red & yellow arrows.
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Old 20th May 2019, 9:11 pm   #9
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Default Re: Star-Lite "Flagship" TF-853 WT's.

Sorry to hear you have been hors de combat.

Interesting pictures, thanks. Those are probably the oldest sets of that type that I have ever seen. I see the crystals, hard soldered, two for TX, two for RX. I would imagine the receiver is a single-conversion superhet, I.F. frequency is likely to be 455KHz but you can confirm that by calculating the difference in MHz between the marked frequency on one of the TX crystals (which will be the same as the channel frequency) and the frequency marked on the corresponding RX crystal.

There is a common (for the time) discrete audio amplifier with input (small) and output (large) transformers and a pair of audio output transistors in between. That will most likely work as the receive audio amp in receive and the modulator in TX. The most common modulation scheme passes the DC supply for the TX output stage through the (or through a) secondary winding of the audio output transformer, when in transmit mode of course.

I'm wondering if those metal-canned ... I can't read any numbers in your photos, but probably Japanese 2S.... germanium transistors, are subject to the same tin-whisker problems as the European AC.... AF... series transistors?

What's the fault symptom?
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Old 21st May 2019, 11:20 am   #10
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Default Re: Star-Lite "Flagship" TF-853 WT's.

Firstly, here's some info on the all 14 Hitachi transistor line up:

5x 2SB75, 2x2SB77, 1x2SA246, 2x2SA350, 1x2SA352, 3x2SA353

Secondly, update on the Crystals: 1x26.610 MC + 1x26.630 MC (Grey Colour) & 1x27.065 MC + 1x 27.085 MC (Black Colour).

Also, now that I have both units opened and I have a good variable power supply I can try them out.

I'll keep you informed.

Cheers Tony
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Old 21st May 2019, 5:14 pm   #11
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Default Re: Star-Lite "Flagship" TF-853 WT's.

So the I.F. is 455KHz as expected.

Without looking, that sounds like an all (or mostly) PNP lineup so the +Ve side of the supply is probably going to be the ground / common rail.

I know from some of your past posts that you have a bit of a 'thing' for old walkie talkies - if you have any of the more typical 'toy' 27Mhz AM walkie talkies they are almost always on channel 14 (27.125MHz) as determined by their one (TX) crystal, but the receivers are usually very simple, a superregen circuit with a single tuned circuit to 'select' the frequency.

As such, they are rather wide open and should be able to receive a signal from these units at close quarters even though they are technically on the 'wrong' channel.

One word of warning, as these are likely to have half-reasonable output power, never go into TX mode without the aerial fully extended or you may damage the RF output transistor - likely to be very difficult to find now.
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Old 21st May 2019, 6:36 pm   #12
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Default Re: Star-Lite "Flagship" TF-853 WT's.

That is a very nice set.
Here I have one AM Skyfon something or other - about 100mW output I would guess. Superhet receiver also with 455kHz IF.
I used to have a pair on 27.125MHz (and I used to have crystals for 28.150 too - a long story).

I made a loan of the other of the pair to someone on my college course in about 1981.
It never came back - I know who he is but I have no idea where he lives!

The difficult part with keeping these going - by experience - is the multi way slide switch which does the TX/RX changeover. These seem to be a custom design for almost every set.

If they go intermittent repairs are very awkward. Hope yours are OK.
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Old 21st May 2019, 6:54 pm   #13
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Default Re: Star-Lite "Flagship" TF-853 WT's.

The switches tend to be of similar construction to cassette recorder record / replay switches, as such, the only really effective long term treatment is to desolder and remove them and take them apart to clean both the fixed contacts and the delicate little sliding spring-clamp contacts. But let's hope it doesn't come to that.

The really simple, typically four transistor sets are minimalist miracles, really, with the same transistor being the transmitter in TX mode and the receiver in RX mode - the other three transistors are usually the audio amp / modulator, so that changeover switch has a lot of rewiring to do as it goes back and forth between the two modes.
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