25 Feb 2010

TW Communicator Restored

I've just had an email from Tom Withers G3HGE who designed the wonderful range of TW Communicator transceivers for 160, 4 and 2m back in the 1960s. These UK products were ahead of their time being single unit transceivers for popular (single) bands. Tom has been restoring a 2m version and he sent me a photo of this (see left). It looks a real beauty. The TW brand is coming back, not with transceivers sadly, but with at least one new interesting product.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Ah, the days when there were British ham radio manufacturers! I wonder how many people remember Telford Communications who made the TC10 tunable IF and matching VFO controlled FM transmitter?

G8JGO said...

I missed two of these on e-bay recently. One was on 4m, the other on 2m. Do you have any links to TW info on the web? I came up with very little.

73. G8JGO

Roger G3XBM said...

Sorry Dave I've not seen any links but will take a look.

Anonymous said...

Greetings Roger

Interesting news about TW returning with a new Product, do you know what type
of product TW will launching?
In the spring of 1999 I picked up a TW TWO MOBILE receiver from a vintage radio meeting
in Harpenden run by the B.V.W.S ( British Vintage Wireless Society) The event is held in the Eric Morecambe memorial hall in the town centre.
It looked a Bargain buy with a price tag of £2.50 so I snapped it up.
When I got it home the Two Meter Converter was missing and transistor in the Mullard module audio
amplifier stage were all blown.
I realigned the tunable I.F from a tuning range of 4 to 6 MHZ to 3.5 to 4 MHZ and added a FET front end
with a bandpass filter centered on 80 Meters.
The Mullard module was replaced with a LM380 audio amplifier IC.( I renamed it the Mobile 80 )
Its performance was very good and the sensitivity was high with no over loading of the front end.
There was extra space in the case and the next idea was to build a OXO transmitter and fit it into the
case of the RX thus turning it in to a TW Mobile Transciever.
I never got round to completing that project due to having a new C.H Boiler fitted, and this resulted in a shack clear out.
The TW 80 was sold at a local rally for £5.00.

Kind Regards

Tony G4LLW

Mike G4BLH said...

Anyone interested in TW might like to take a look at a website that I have set up.

www.twradio.co.uk

Tony, G4LLW, if you happen to read this, I wonder if you took any photos of the Twomobile while you had it? The New TW product is not a radio, watch the website for details to be announced shortly.

Mike G4BLH