Standard Products - VHF/UHF PMR Fixed Stations 1947 - 2002

The fixed station equipment will take some time to fully document due to the large number of product families, individual products, sub-variants and combinations of equipments used. They are also heavy and bulky to move in and out of storage for conservation and restoration, and will therefore probably be the last of the standard products to be photographed for the web site.

Please note: The chronological order is approximate

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This was the first Pye two-way radio fixed station product. It was designed by the war-time Pye Ltd team, who were gradually transferred from the Pye Labs building in the old Haig Road, Cambridge site over to the new ‘Aerial Tower Hut’ which was the first home of Pye Telecommunications Ltd. This corrugated steel building was located on the sharp bend in St. Andrews Road, Cambridge.

The PTC104/105 was mounted in a styled 19 inch rack cabinet made by Imhof Ltd and finished in black wrinkle paint with chrome fittings. It was known as the "black beauty" by some Pye Telecom staff, and was also available in a grey paint finish.

 

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The PTC300 was a first generation 100 Watt AM fixed station initially designed for use in the British Police quasi-synchronous and multi-carrier systems introduced in 1947/1948.

The design appeared to follow a similar construction to wartime T1131 AM transmitter and the 4 foot high cabinet featured double doors with apertures to enable the two top panel meters to be read with the doors closed.

 

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The PTC703 and PTC704 was the second generation design of Pye fixed stations and replaced the PTC104/5/6 series equipments from 1949 until the Ranger generation was introduced in 1956/1957.

The novel receiver design by George Smith was utilised in both fixed and mobile equipments of the time and used a first IF determined by the local oscillator crystal frequency plus 2.9 MHz and a fixed second IF of 2.9MHz. The transmitter designed by Brian Armstrong used a type 832 VHF tetrode valve in the final amplifier, this was replaced with a more modern QQV03-20 in the PTC703Z model in about 1955.

 

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To follow

 

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