With some recent acquisitions, I've been able to assemble enough sets to provide a gallery on early Australian Philips colour televisions. I apologise in advance for the less than ideal camera angles and other issues, but the sets are all in storage at the moment until I have an area to display them.

In preparation for the commencement of official colour broadcasting in 1975 Philips Australia released its first colour TV sets in 1974 using a modified version of the European Philips K9 chassis. The Australian chassis was called the K9A. The main difference was the adoption of a rotary VHF only tuner instead of the varactor tuner normally fitted. This was because at the time, we did not have a UHF service in Australia and our VHF band extended into the FM broadcast frequencies which required a unique tuner.

The initial range consisted of 4 sets and I'm fortunate to have 3 of the 4.
The first set was a 22" table set, model number 02KD254. I don't have this set yet, but it would look the same as its bigger brother, the 26" 02KD654 (first picture).

The two remaining sets of the range were the high end 26" console models, 02KD684 (second picture) and 02KD694 (third picture). I have not seen the speakers used in the KD694 as they are in a sealed enclosure.

http://65c02.org/andrew/AK/Philips KD654.jpg
http://65c02.org/andrew/AK/Philips KD684.jpg
http://65c02.org/andrew/AK/Philips KD694.jpg

By the following year (1975) a UHF broadcast service had been allocated (but did not begin until a few years later) so it became viable to develop an Australian version of the varactor tuner. This allowed the Australian sets to return to the original European design with push button tuning. This chassis was designated the K9A-2. This new range had been reduced to three sets, the 22" 02KD255 (which I don't have) and the two 26" sets, the 02KD655 (fourth picture) and the 02KD685 console (fifth picture - this set is currently missing its legs). The KD694 was dropped after the first year, I suspect due to poor sales as it was very expensive.

http://65c02.org/andrew/AK/Philips KD655.jpg
http://65c02.org/andrew/AK/Philips KD685.jpg

This last picture is of the K9A-2 chassis. This is a delta gun CRT chassis using either a A66-140X or the quick heat version A66-410X CRT's (26" models). For those not familiar with this chassis, the silver cans on the smaller panel contain plugin circuit modules. They were designed to be easily replaced and disposable (but were usually repaired). The power supply lives in the cage in the middle bottom of the case. It is a switchmode design, but the chassis is not live as the metal framework is tied to earth via the power lead.

http://65c02.org/andrew/AK/Philips K9A-2 chassis.jpg

The Australian K9a chassis power supply must be different from the one fitted in European K9 sets as they had a live chassis!

It would be a sensible mod to swap the PSU in an Euro K9 with an isolated Australian K9a PSU so that it'd be possible to add AV inputs, and to work on the chassis safely with scopes and so on.

Hi Andrew! Your sets are simply wonderful! You could never say they are Philips K9 by their appearance. I love the console type and the frst tabletop with the american style VHF knob! I wonder why they didn't use a simple vhf only tuning drawer with six or eight presettings.

Thanks for the interest. Our variations on the K9 are certainly different from the European ones. I've not seen pictures of the New Zealand made sets or possibly sets made in South Africa (if it was done there).

I've just compared the circuit of the K9 and K9A PSU and there are several differences. The main one is the use of a high frequency transformer to isolate the rectified mains from the secondaries. Very much like a computer power supply. The power authorities here were suspicious of non-earthed appliances, so all early Australian manufactured sets had earthed power supplies.

I'm not sure why we didn't adopt a modified pre-set tuner from the beginning. I guess cost was a major factor, the varactor tuner would have been expensive compared to the off the shelf locally made VHF rotary tuner.

In the next few days, I'll post some K11 pictures.

Hi Andrew, do you have philips sets with the K9s chassis made to be remote controlled? We at the time had the bulky,black ultrasonic remote control.
The same also equipped K11 models and there was a special one for the so called "ong" system tv set (picture).

Our K9A chassis was never available with a remote. The K9 models I've listed above are the full range of K9 based sets sold here (7 models).

The K11A chassis was available with the ultrasonic remote. The remote looks similar to the one in your picture. More info on these sets to follow.

I've seen a few of those remotes around over time, but until now I didn't know which set they were for. It looks like it has a lot more functions than most of the ultrasonic remotes that I have seen.

In the past I've had Rank Arena and Thorn sets with ultrasonic remotes, but they only controlled power and channel. The Thorn set in particular was overly sensitive to the point that I ended up disabling it. At the time it was my father's living room set and it was quite inconvenient that his cigarette lighter could cause it to change channels.

I've never seen a 22" K9A or the high end 02KD694. The speaker (speakers?) used in the 02KD694 are possibly Philips' 8" twin cone (AD9710 or variant thereof?) that perform very well indeed.

Hi! The remote control used in K9/K11/KM2 tv sets was the same. It was ultrasonic and had 12 buttons for the 12 presettings, +/- volume, +/-brightness,+/-colour,on and off. Only one model had a slightly different remote,the one who came with the set equipped with the so called "ong system" . This tv (it came in two versions,one with K11 and one with K12 chassis) had an unique osd system. The remote (still ultrasonic) had 8 keys to recall 16 presettings. It had buttons labelled " 1,2,3,4" and "A,B,C,D" You had to press two buttons to get i.e. the first program. You had the following combinations: "A1,A2,A3,A4,B1,B2,B3,B4,C1,C2,C3,C4 and D1,D2,D3,D4" The preset chosen was superimposed to the picture on the screen with a pattern of 8 squares. It also had bars of different colours to show which point colour, contrast and volume levels where. There was a green button to recall the "factory levels" of brightness and colour. This set also had an automatic channel search and a common lamp placed behind a grille on the front just to show the set was on! Below the "italian" range of Philips color tv with K9 (except the two multistandard sets which had the KM2 chassis)chassis in 1975

Looking more closely at your pictures I think at least some sets with the "ong" system or a variation of it were sold here. I have seen that control panel before, but I have never seen such a set running so I don't know if they had the same OSD.

It may have even been used in a Kriesler set that I missed out on recently (Kriesler sets were based on Philips designs, with some differences).

The 26C465 looks like a K11 set that was sold here. The 18" 18C435 was never sold here unfortunately. It looks like a cool little set (and I tend to go for smaller sets these days).

We didn't get the on screen display until the KL9A and KT3A chassis. It may have been available as early as the K12A chassis, but I have yet to find out about all the K12 variants we had.

The next series of sets are based on the K11A chassis. This was produced from 1976 to 1979 and came in three main model variants, the 02KJ256/KJ656 push button tune models, the 02KH656/KH686 touch tune with 8 channel ultrasonic remote models and the 02KL257/KL657/KL687 touch tune with no remote. The other models which I'm not familiar with are the 02KH298, 02KH606, 02KL658 and 02KN637. Hopefully I can find an illustrated catalogue of Australian models one day.

The chassis started out as the K11A-1 which used the same signal panel as the K9A-2 but a new defection panel to suit the A66-500X inline CRT. The chassis later evolved into the K11A-2 which had changes to the signal panel (IC audio, IF and detector modules combined into a new module and the colour demodulator module replaced with an IC on the signal panel.) There was also a K11A-3 version but I'm not sure what changes were made for this variant.

I have four variants of this chassis, the 26" 02KJ656 push button tune (first picture). The 02KJ256 is a 22" version of the same set.

The second is the 26" 02KL657 touch tune model with no remote (second picture). The 02KL257 is a 22" set of similar appearance.

Third is the 02KL687 touch tune console model (third picture). This is a later production version with the K11A-2 chassis (fourth picture).

The last set of this range that I have is the 02KH686 console model with touch tuning and ultrasonic remote (not pictured). This looks identical to the 02KL687 so I won't include an extra photo. The set I have is missing its remote transmitter but I have the remains of a dismantled one that may be able to be reassembled.

http://65c02.org/andrew/AK/Philips KJ656.jpg

http://65c02.org/andrew/AK/Philips KL657.jpg

http://65c02.org/andrew/AK/Philips KL687.jpg

http://65c02.org/andrew/AK/Philips KL687-chassis.jpg

Here in Europe, or at least in Italy, the K11 chassis was used from 1975 to 1978 then was replaced by the K12, the signal panel had a high voltage transistor audio amp with an output transformer and separate chroma modules and remained unchanged from the beginning to the end of the K11 production run, actually, the only difference is that most sets made after 1977 had pink component and track markings on the signal panel while older ones had green markings!

Our K11A-1 used the same transistor audio amplifier with output transformer. It is the same as that used on the K9A's. I wonder if the changes made to for our K11A-2 were unique to Australia or were they based on changes done by Philips Holland.