MY RADIOCONTROLLED BOAT and my RADIOCONTROLLED BUS :  
When I was 13 years old, my father built with me this boat of which I realized many parts.
Then I equipped it with a radio remote control with a transmitter and a receiver working at 72MHz.
Then finding that it was not easy in Paris where I lived with my parents to find a body of water I decided to build myself without any model a radio-controlled bus in meccano. (I was passionate about building from this age, and wanted to become an engineer). I also made the plans, at age 7, a lunar rocket.
So I adapted all the equipment of the boat: the 12V engine, the single-channel radio control receiver, in the bus. I have worked with this model for a long time, providing it with opening doors, headlights, flashing, power steering, and a real differential in Meccano parts.
My biggest pride is in designing a latching relay control system, which counted in binary. thus making it possible to extend the only possible functions of the single-channel transceiver system. At that time, radio control enthusiasts used multichannel transmitters, which allowed to simultaneously control several functions: steering, forward or reverse, doors, etc ... These systems were of course much more expensive than a single-channel radio control transmitter .
Thanks to my Uncle Robert Filhol, Centralien, who offered me 2 batteries cadenza-nickel 6V, which I put in parallel, and a transformer 220V that I equipped in charger, I could realize this set with the transceiver that I had already built for the boat.
Thanks to my 2 relay system, I was counting on knowing it! in binary in 1953! : Well before the advent of computers.
An impulse on the button of the transmitter made advance the bus, a second it backed it back. A third started the steering motor continuously. Once the course was reached, the bus was started with an extra boost. All of a cable had obviously been needed, wiring that I designed entirely myself, without any plan or scheme, at 13 years old. All this is done now with integrated circuits, in a serial way, according to the same principle.

Here are some pictures:

The bus with its power steering, headlights, and opening doors.	With the transceiver system I built at age 13, it could operate at a distance up to 100m.	As for a real truck or bus, I designed a transmission with differential, allowing to turn without skidding wheels
C'était la maquette d'un véritable chalutier. Longueur :  91cm

RETOUR A LA PAGE D'ACCUEIL