TOPIC:

Jonny wrote:

Nice spot

ETA - assuming the badge panels on the AS-8 are the same size as seen on the AS-7 for example, that would make the servo a bit wider than other Acoms servos with close numbers ... I wonder if we're looking at a slightly large, high(er) torque servo, and Acoms used an earlier model as the basis? Without any dimensions or specs I'm just throwing spaghetti at the wall here
TBH it's hard to even tell what colour th case is from those photos - you'd think black, but maybe a very dark green? 
 

They could be anywhere in that colour range, having recently acquired several early servos (mainly for parts), an original ASA-227 for base reference, plus a mixture of AS-1 & AS-2 ranging from dark green to the AS-2 which as best I can tell really IS black.

 

Here's an oddity for you;
Yellow Band 3 crystals ?!?!?

We all know Band 3 is Orange of course (at least in Acoms' terminology), but I have in my collection a couple of what are clearly yellow Band 3 crystals. The actual crystals are correctly marked 27.095 and yet comparison of "proper" orange & yellow ones seems to indicate these are misprints rather than aging / fading ? I've seen a few others on Ebay listing the same too, so I think it must be a production error.

Has anyone else come across this ?
 

BlacqueJacque wrote:

...
Yellow Band 3 crystals ?!?!?
...
 

Most of my cased orange Acoms xtals have faded, but only as far as peach rather than yellow. I also have a cased Acoms band 5, 27.175mhz "green" xtal that is actually blue, I'd always put that down to age/UV exposure.

Futaba xtals are nominally the same colour codes as Acoms, but mine all seem to have faded to brown, yellow, or no colour at all. I've "fixed" several "untested" radio sets just by swapping in a genuinely matched pair of xtals  

The cheap, uncased, unbranded 27mhz xtals I've bought have invariably been the wrong colours, some weren't even the right frequencies

So, let's tie another knot in the timeline.....the Mk.III(c) (for want of a better description) clearly shows an AR-227FE receiver on the box art, the flying lead rx is gone, which in turn makes you wonder why the Mk.IV came on occasions with the AR-227F non BEC receiver ? For nitro cars maybe which necessitated the use of a radio battery pack ?

Anyway, this variant should hopefully be winging it's way to me shortly;
 

BlacqueJacque wrote:

... makes you wonder why the Mk.IV came on occasions with the AR-227F non BEC receiver ? ...
...
 

There's been some theorising (and some documentation to back it up IIRC) that the "mk.iv" isn't the mk.iv at all, that it was a "premium" product that overlapped the mk.iii's run by some time, and the mk.v replaced them both. From that you could hypothesise that the "F" RX came with the earliest mk.iv sets, and the "FE" with the rest - and therefore that the letter on the RX doesn't necessarily correspond to the order the were designed in  ... it's another mystery, like why the AR-227D RX only exists in a few adverts with the Tamiya Fox.

TBH, I'm not convinced that even Acoms knew what they were doing - I think the best we can do decades after is aim for reasonable confidence that what we're putting in our cars is plausible for their age    
 

Jonny wrote:

TBH, I'm not convinced that even Acoms knew what they were doing - I think the best we can do decades after is aim for reasonable confidence that what we're putting in our cars is plausible for their age    

 

You're very probably correct.
Having stumbled upon another nugget, I wonder if the radical styling change & obvious costs savings were a result of this;

"May 1991: Casio Computer Co wants to expand its small presence in telecommunications equipment, and to that end it has agreed to pay some $10.2m for a 58.8% stake in Asahi Corp."

www.encyclopedi...ter-co-ltd

This topic is gorgeous. It's why I collected some acoms . Jonny it's your fault and lot of thanks to you and you to Jacque. 

Acoms 335 (3-channel 35 mhz) set spotted on ebay (item # 376614638992).

Servos are AS-2, RX is a 435, TX looks like a MK.ii with the thrird channel on an additional lever.

The rx looks smaller than a mk2 tx one. More like a mk5.

Which internal battery holder (2x2x2 AA) did you get? I need to replace mine. Where did you order it from?