Sony BT044S 4" B&W Portable

[AUdubon5425]

Returning from a trip, I stopped at a thrift store about 50 miles before home, in a town I don't get to often. Didn't see any electronics except for a BPC by the door, so started browsing the books. A little sign in a hallway caught my eye that said "electronics - ask for assistance."

Seeing no one around, I made my way in and found two little treasures. One is this Sony BT044S, made in October 1985. It is a 4" B&W portable running on four C batteries. This set is absolutely mint - I had no idea if it worked but for $1.00 I took the chance.

Put some batteries in and voila, she came to life with quite a nice picture.

A little research showed that this was assembled in Mexico and is a rebodied Sony Watchman FD-40. It uses a neat crt called a flat display picture tube, where the gun is above and parallel to the screen. There's an illustration of it at Frank's Handheld TVs: http://www.taschenfernseher.de/e-tube.htm

I'm happy to have found it, but at the same time sad it only has four months left before all it will pick up is the shopping channel.

I'll post some pictures of the chassis later. I almost hate to open it up.

Oh, the other item is a Realistic DX-440, which the lady insisted on only charging me $4 for, because "it sure looks like it takes a lot of batteries." I tried to offer her more for it but she lowered the price from $5 to $4.