11 May 2015

Pye PF8

See https://sites.google.com/site/g3xbmqrp3/vuhf/pf8 .

In my younger days I was a design engineer with Pye Telecom and one of the projects I worked on back in the 1970s was the Pye PF8.  In its day this was a very novel transceiver, with few controls to get broken, an internal antenna and a DC-DC converter so it ran on a couple of rechargeable batteries.  I was responsible for the antenna and the TX audio but was also heavily involved in debugging the many issues we had.  The product became world famous as Bodie and Doyle used the radio in the TV show "The Professionals".  Not that many were sold and on the second hand market they are very hard to find. I know some have been put to use on 70cms. They worked well in the end but they were a nightmare to work on at the time.

It was around this time I met Clive Sinclair.  He was interested in compact antennas for his little TV and was interested in co-operating  on RF ICs. Neither happened but I was flattered he had asked me for advice!

2 comments:

gj7rwt said...

I remember watching the Professionals as a young lad thinking wow I would love one of those walkie talkies. I think I may have one in the junk box somewhere which was going to be used for parts reclamation.

73's
De Andy

Bob G3WKW said...

Iirc the ones used on The Professionals seemed to be miraculously capable of duplex operation which was virtually Science Fiction at the time. How quickly things developed in the next decades. I think we thought the industrial designers had been imitating the Philishave. I think I spotted a Bantam in my attic, probably still crystalled on GB3PI.