#2085 Raymond Flight Recorder (part 4 of 4)

That's a shame.

What about the other tracks?

That tape is moving far too fast. SLOW IT DOWN !

You got to try other heads don't just give up

You also didn't play the entire tape

In this stage you can put a signal into one head and try to recover it to verify that everything is working (like the signal level).

What if you found a signal encoded on the tape and the next day the defense department was knocking at your door along with homeland security?

I think the gain you will need is in the thousands. Also, the normal tape speed for that unit is less than an inch per second.

Like I mentioned before, I got some flight data recorder tapes but they were transferred onto plastic 7 inch reels for convenience by someone. In the case of these, I have no idea what machine they were played on and how the data was extracted other than to say the tapes make noises on a RTR. Now with the voice recorders, they would just put the whole thing on a bench and power it and transfer the audio off onto a cassette recorder. This was not for government investigations, just the company wanting to listen to "incidents" for internal use. The tapes were a loop and after so many long hours, they would remove the tape heads and relap them to remove wear.

You may be aware of and I recall that the recording process needs some special tricks to make it of good quality. It is not sufficient to push data out to the tape.

where tf u get this stuff lol

At that speed you will get nothing.

For music I always use a tape speed of 9.53 cm/s. Usually voice recording is done at a even lower speed because you dont need as nuch bandwith. I dont think you can just hook an oszilloscope to the tape heads, the output signal is much too low. Why not just connect the tape heads to the microphone input of your PC?

no happy ending this time.

I had hope but have been disappointed. Im not happy about these wire cuttings.
Weren't all the wires attached to a big three row DB 50 style connector on the frame? Just get a socket and tap off your signals there. And if you just want to know if there's something on the tape just put it on another machine.

Fun project. Thanks.

i wonder why the read heads are centre-tapped? Is it so that they provide a differential signal for noise reduction purposes?

The read head has a certain bandwidth. If you run the tape too fast (as you have done), there will be no output.
Doesn't mean the tape was blank.

One left on eBay "Raymond USAF Spy Recorder" lol

I know SHE will say it if I don't. You are going too fast buddy. Also I think you need to bias the heads.

Thank you for all your great videos!!

It can be used as storage for an homemade computer with a track for the clock, one for metadata and two for data for exemple

Is a recording head also good for reading? Why then does my old tape deck have two inside? To me the journey has not ended yet.

You're running the motor too fast. Don't burn it out.

Have you tried all four heads? You could also record something to playback...

It strikes me that the tape speed you are seeing is way to fast. That whole tape would be gone in a few minutes at that speed. If it was being used in an aircraft, it would be pretty useless.