[QuadList] fun questions for you hardware gurus

[Dave Sieg]

I owned a pair of FR-80's many years ago that were surplus from NASA in
Huntsville.
I remember being super impressed with the level of design perfection.
They were 14-track 1" machines.  Found an old B&W print from my dusty
archives...
Never could figure out why 14 when the standard for 1" for the rest of us
was 16 tracks, unless NASA for some reason spec'ed it that way.

They had beautifully machined 10" brass capstan pulleys that used
sewn silk or nylon belts, ran at 15, 30, or 60 ips, had swappable record and
playback modules for regular or FM recording, some even had little 2"
oscilliscopes for each channel!  They used compressed air feeding the
guides, and a pressure sensor to each guide modulated the take-up
or supply reel tension.  The capstan was in the middle, the tape wrapped
around an idler with an optical tachometer, and when you started the
tape in Reproduce or Record, the takeup would first pull the tape through
the whole head assembly and get it moving at exactly the right speed
before the pinch rollers would engage it to the spinning capstan.
I was quite impressed with the transport.

Of course this was for the space program, probably used to record many
channels of telemetry of rocket engine tests or who knows what.
I've since seen similar apparently compatible 14-track machines made by
Honeywell and... Bell & Howell?

My first exposure to the later quad-type machines like the FR-600 was
the guys working to read the Apollo tapes.

But I was always extremely impressed with Ampex's ability to turn out
such quality instrumentation.

It was interesting having two of them standing in my spare bedroom on 2x4's!
They made flawless analog recordings...
But no erase heads!!!

On Sat, Jan 26, 2013 at 5:15 PM, Roger Brett <rcbindy at comcast.net> wrote:

>
> Great picture, Don!
>
> On 1/21/2013 12:57 AM, Don Norwood wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi Dave:
>> In the useless trivia department, Ampex used this style switch on the
>> instrumentation recorders before they used it on the video decks. The
>> VR-1100 was the first quad transport to use them but the first video
>> machine to use them was the VR-8000 2" helical. However, they had
>> already been in use on instrumentation decks. Here's a picture of a
>> transport control for an FR-600 that I had and it predates the video
>> decks. There seemed to be a lot of technology and design sharing within
>> the company, but many video folks don't know much about other Ampex
>> products. A similar situation existed at RCA, and both companies had
>> government contracts for specialized products that were often far more
>> sophisticated than what we saw in the television business.
>> Don Norwood
>> Digitrak Communications, Inc.
>> www.digitrakcom.com <http://www.digitrakcom.com>
>>
>>     ----- Original Message -----
>>     *From:* Dave Sieg <mailto:dave at zfx.com>
>>
>>     **
>>     ------------------------------**------------------------------**
>> ------------
>>
>>
>>     You are very close on the push-buttons, they were from a remote
>>     panel for a FR-80
>>     instrumentation recorder, but are essentially the same ones they put
>>     on the VR-1200
>>     and 2000. Except "Play" became "Reproduce" for the NASA crowd.
>>
>>
>>
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-- 
Dave Sieg
www.linkedin.com/in/davesieg
www.davesieg.com
www.scanimate. <http://www.scanimate.net>com
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