Further to the piece on the gates to Wood Norton I posted on January 1st, I have received the following from Nigel Adams,(Head of Network Architecture) at BBC Wood Norton):-
Thought you might like to see this from Evesham Journal June 2012 – we hope they might come back one day…
From Neil Pittaway this morning:-
Elizabeth, Bob’s sister has let us know that Bob died peacefully in the early hours.
He had recently moved to a nursing home in Bristol close to his sister and Jeremy (Brown) and Jeff (Baker) have visited in the last few days.
A Happy New Year to everybody – rather a significant year for the “Class of 63” as it will be 50 years since we joined (September 9th) and 20 years since we left (March 31st) – where did the time go?
A couple of pictures to start off 2013. The first is of a place you may recall – the Effects Workshop, with Robin Lobb (we believe) in the background.
And, a hang-over from last Autumn, taken on our way back from Telford – who nicked the gates to Wood Norton?
Last night was the final “Children in Need” transmission from Television Centre. Ten days earlier, Andy Barker marked the end of TV Centre by playing “The Last Post” on an old bugle. Here is a link to the Youtube version.
At the beginning of this year I received an email from Larry Odham in the US with an enquiry:-
“I have been trying to find a equipment manual to get a copy from for a Ampex 1012 universal colortec.
The 1012 was used on the Ampex VR-1200 and VR-2000 quad machines.
I have several Ampex VR 1200s here operational and I use them to transfer NTSC quad tapes for preservation. I want to make one of the machines here PAL-capable.
I was very happy to find a 1012 spec sheet on your website that I was able to print out.
Is there anyone on your site or e-mail list that may have access to a 1012 manual, or know where one might be found?
I read an interesting passage in one of the history tabs,might have been under the hardware tab?, about the first Ampex VR 2000 VTRs using a standard NTSC colortec that had been modified by the BBC fellows with a “box” in order to use for PAL. I sure would like to know more about how that worked.
thanks for any help, or suggestions, or leads.”
Clive McCarthy took on the challenge and Larry has just sent me some photographs of his set-up and a brief description.
Clive McCarthy has been a real help at every turn, supplying me with important information about how the early Ampex quad VTRs did PAL before the 1012 colortec. I doubt I could have gotten very far at all without him, or you and the vtoldboys website! Thanks very much!
To bring you up on the project, What I built is exactly what Clive had written me about in his detailed circuitry analysis – and it works beautifully!
What I basically did was to place a rack next to the VR-1200 with the two NTSC 1011 colortecs to be PAL-modified. Then, added a patch bay with all the signals to and from the VR-1200 making it possible to patch the 1011 NTSC colortec out of the machine and patch a PAL modified 1011 colortec into its place. A Tektronix 1411 sync generator was added to supply the correct PAL syncs.
The actual delaying, burst switching and error detecting circuitry is breadboarded on the small table in front of the rack. I was able to go one more step beyond and found a complete 1012 colortec manual at the Stanford University archive that they were willing to photocopy for me. That was more help in filling in some of the technical gaps.
Well done Clive! Oldboys to the rescue. Mark you, I’m amazed he can still remember it all!
Larry has sent a link to his own website advertising his conversion business – some nostalgic pictures here(!):-
http://www.quadtapexfer.com/Home.php
And here is a link to the Tennesse Archive of Moving Image & S0und where it all started!
http://www.tamisarchive.org/TAMIS_Web/TAMIS_home.html
More sad news I’m afraid – this time from Dennis Collett.
John died yesterday (August 10th) at the age of 90. Many of us wil lremember with affection all the hard work he & Audrey put in over the years on the Christmas Lunches, initially at Motspur and more recently at Surbiton.
I’m sure all of the Oldboys thoughs will be with Audrey at this sad time.
Further details as we learn of them.
Bob Tolson has just contacted us:-
I’m sorry to be the bearer of sad news but Malcolm Robertson’s wife Cynthia has rung me to tell me that he died this morning at 4am. He had collapsed at home and was taken to hospital where at first he seemed to have recovered. He was taken for a scan as he had caught his head when he fell and during that his heart stopped beating. Although they were able to get it going it stopped again soon after and that was it. Due to the circumstances there will be a post mortem so that will delay the funeral arrangements.
John Sedgwick informs us that Mike passed away on Monday (July 23rd) after a short period in hospital, he had been receiving treatment for cancer for several years.
I recently received an email from Simon Ellis who is involved in the disposal of TC contents(!).
“Currently undertaking mass disposal effort of redundant equipment currently languishing in tech stores throughout TVC. No real treasures -I have looked thoroughly! I have sent remaining 1”s to John Ireland and Mike Lambert at BFI Berkhamstead for spares/repair.
I intend to take more pics before destruction/part sale of TVC – need decent camera – not my phone this time!”
These are the photographs that Simon sent – a view that we never saw!
I suspect that the far corner is VT16, with VT14 & 12 nearest camera. Left hand wall is TX area 2. There’s a potential clue in a closeup of the sign over the door centre frame. (see below)
But I could be wrong…….
We have just heard the sad news from Russell Williams that his father Chris passed away last Friday, at his home. I understand his family were with him. The funeral is to be this Thursday, 26th January at Marloes, Pembrokeshire at 3pm, Marloes Church.