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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 23rd Nov 2018, 10:50 am   #1
Cobaltblue
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Default Ptarmigan Video

With all the Military radio threads at the moment I peaked my interest in Ptarmigan again.

I was a Plessey Avionics and Communications from 75 to 78 at West Leigh on this project so still have an interest.

I believe it finally came out of service some 3 years ago.

It obviously developed over that period adding functionality.

A lot of the actual hardware was built here in Poole and I often discuss the PTD's with some of the guys here at the time.

Anyway for anyone interested I found a quite interesting (well to me anyway) video on Youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKJXnDmql-k

It looks pretty much as I remember, I worked on what is described in the video as the CIG but we referred to as the TCU (Terminal Control Unit)

Cheers

Mike T
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Old 24th Nov 2018, 12:54 am   #2
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Default Re: Ptarmigan Video

Thanks for the link. I worked on some of the radio modules for Ptarmigan's predecessor, Mallard, when I was with Plessey. Mallard got axed in the early 1970's, and I left before Ptarmigan got going. Interesting to see how it worked out.
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Old 24th Nov 2018, 8:21 am   #3
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Default Re: Ptarmigan Video

There was a complete Mallard A model Node in a container on site at West Leigh some of the people on site had worked on it although not in our team I will PM one name you might recall.
The container was to go on a 7.5 or 10 ton lorry I was told. We used to rob it for parts mostly mechanical at the prototype stage.
ISTR the Radio was Hybrid with 4CX250 output valves. No one ever talked about the technology but I will use the cvsd encoder/decoder before the 3 bit companding encoder was available. I might still have a Mallard encoder

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Old 25th Nov 2018, 10:57 am   #4
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Default Re: Ptarmigan Video

Hi All,
Interesting video. I have a bit of ptarmigan kit I picked up a couple of years ago. It’s not without its issues as it had suffered water damage, but I’ve nanaged to dry it out and Hope to get some power on it when time permits. I know little about it apart from it has some of its test kit still in place, although I suspect the useful kit was where the gaps in the racks are now.
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Old 25th Nov 2018, 12:07 pm   #5
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Default Re: Ptarmigan Video

I never saw one in the flesh in that container but that looks like it might be a Switch.

I used to see the switches "naked" and of course one rack of pc's look pretty much like any other.

During the design phase the test equipment of choice to create traffic were the Computer Appreciation Naked Minis. Although data traffic was sometimes created by Membrain random sequence generators.

ISTR that the switches had air purification systems to prevent operator contamination by fall out and radiation.

I suspect that the bits that are missing will be the cryptos and PTD's

In a switch there will be a lot of cryptos I would expect.

At the time I left most of the pcbs were populated with thick film hybrid parts.

Is this the case with your equipment?

Be nice to see some pics inside

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Old 25th Nov 2018, 1:34 pm   #6
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Default Re: Ptarmigan Video

Hi Mike,
My understanding is that it’s just a repair body, which seems to agreed with the layout.
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Old 25th Nov 2018, 4:08 pm   #7
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Default Re: Ptarmigan Video

Never saw one of those so thanks for the pictures.

I don't think much effort was being made when I left the project on repair facilities well not at West Leigh anyway

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