Transistor Museum Oral History Joe D'Airo Trans-Aire Transistor Radios Page 12

A Transistor Museum Interview with Joe D’Airo

Transistor History at Trans-Aire Electronics Inc

Trans-Aire Radios for Vietnam

Above is close-up view of the circuit board for the Vietnam radio. Joe comments: “The radio used a 2N718 (Fairchild) type transistor for the converter (metal-cased transistor at upper left). GE parts for the two IF stages, and three more for audio (the two output transistors are hidden by the ferrite antenna). The GE transistors are labeled with TA part numbers. There is an unlabeled transistor at the bottom of the board which is used a detector diode. Note that front of the radio says “6 Transistor”, and in this instance, it was true!” The TA transistor part numbers are similar to the “2N” numbers listed in the Sams substitution table shown on page 7 of the Oral History. For example, TA 410 corresponds to the 2N410 IF transistor and the TA 406 corresponds to the 2N406 audio driver. Note the use of US made components (transistors and resistors) and Japanese components (capacitors and IF transformers). Joe mentions that at this time (1965) all production except for this large US government contract was done at the Hong Kong facility. The only other exception was a large re-work project at the New Hyde Park facility to correct a manufacturing error in some Hong Kong manufactured radios.

Go To D’Airo Oral History, Page 13

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