[modeleng] Re: Off topic-AVO

I passed on Alan's AVO e-mail plus some of the replies on to a friend who 
once worked for the PMG (now Telstra) and ABC TV here in Australia.  His 
reply may be of interest.

Lee

Yes, Lee we used to use AVO-s all the time in the PMG and the ABC 
Engineering areas.  My dad also had a model 40 which wasn't all that good 
for electronics measurements, but the model 8 was what we had to work with 
in the Deparment and the ABC.

We also used Tektronix oscilloscopes for looking at wave forms - which of 
course you do a lot of the Television Engineering.

We had Tektronix video waveform monitors for looking at vision signals. 
Tektronix gear was made on the West Coast of the USA, and really was 
beautifully engineered stuff... All mini valves and beautifully 
constructed...

Audio levels were monitored by standard PMG VU meters, which of course were 
analogue with special rise time characteristics suited to monitoring sound 
levels.  At ABN2 TX we had quite a lot of Marconi test gear as well as the 
whole station was basically Marconi.

We used AWA test gear for Noise and  Distortion measuring, and modulation 
monitoring on the PMG's AM broadcasting TXs (which were mainly ST&C),  and 
also had a lot of good Marconi gear for our picture monitors.  We also some 
very good precision picture monitors by Astor, which was an Australian firm; 
indeed we used them all over the studios - but they were black and white of 
course.

Our cameras in those days were Marconi Mk IIIs and Mk IVs, and they used 4.5 
inch diameter image orthicon pick up tubes.  These were truly beautiful 
things to look inside, at as they were very complex types of vacuum tubes. 
How they could manufacture such complex things really was a marvel!

I left Engineering during the time we were converting to colour.  We were 
getting a lot of Philips stuff, although we had Marconi colour cameras up at 
Dickson during 1978 while I was there.

All video tape recording was done on Ampex machines - they were the 
inventors of VT and of course were an American outfit - but very nice gear 
indeed.

cheers B 

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