From the construction I'd say this is probably one of the earliest Mountain Breeze ionisers, sine it's clear that the PCB is hand etched and assembled. It also looks like it uses improvised housing components to give a neat finished appearance.
The unit would have been quite time consuming to build, since it is very much manually assembled and glued together.
Inside is the standard Mountain Breeze style voltage multiplier with the two 10 megohm output resistors and unusually a 10K input resistor too.
The neon indicator is brought down to the high voltage end which isn't something I care for, since you are basically bringing wires from the low voltage end to the high voltage end. But there's no sign of any corrosion associated with rogue corona inside. The indicator also uses a 180K resistor, which makes the later models with the failure prone 100K resistor look like a step backwards.
The single needle is in a standard turned pin socket on the front mounted in the centre of a plastic disk and with a small piece of PCB material at the back to allow it to be soldered in securely. This means that the needle can be replaced with a suitably thin one if desired. (or even a carbon fibre emitter).
The unit would have been quite time consuming to build, since it is very much manually assembled and glued together.
Inside is the standard Mountain Breeze style voltage multiplier with the two 10 megohm output resistors and unusually a 10K input resistor too.
The neon indicator is brought down to the high voltage end which isn't something I care for, since you are basically bringing wires from the low voltage end to the high voltage end. But there's no sign of any corrosion associated with rogue corona inside. The indicator also uses a 180K resistor, which makes the later models with the failure prone 100K resistor look like a step backwards.
The single needle is in a standard turned pin socket on the front mounted in the centre of a plastic disk and with a small piece of PCB material at the back to allow it to be soldered in securely. This means that the needle can be replaced with a suitably thin one if desired. (or even a carbon fibre emitter).
The pads/tracks spacing looks very close, I'm surprised they don't track/flash over …… at least to me, they look close…
K.
Where can i buy one of these ion probes from please. I have had them in 2 aviaries for 35 years and would like one in a 3rd.
Alternately do you know the address of the manufactures Thank you
Sheila
Could benefit from flux removal & better clipping of the excess leads, plus that track being repaired 🙂
would this only work if the bayonet happened to be the correct polarity to be referenced to earth?
Drinking game: take a shot every time Clive says "I'm not a hundred percent sure". I'm generally drunk within minutes!
Ah Pifco.. The Provincial Incandescent Fittings Company… another great British Brand that's still around as just a label stuck on chinese crap 🙁
interesting to see the earlier uk models, much more of a concept design, and pifco always tended to manufacture overseas, usually 'empire' made. But this shows made in UK wasnt always a marker of quality!