I wrote a post back in February regarding a weird observation, in that i had an Orchid that was imitating the look of a model i have on the shelf of one of the Voyager space probes. See here: Weird observation
Well things have moved on. We only placed the Orchid on the shelf temporarily as we had no space in the kitchen where it used to reside, as the wife had a whole load of vases out with a selection of cut flowers on display. She loves flowers in the house however she does not have a green finger on her hands, thats me, i look after the potted flowers and the garden. We have had this Orchid about 4 years now and it gets trimmed, cleaned and looked after, and now it has claimed its permanent place on the living room shelf, as it is thriving with its friend the Voyager probe.
Back in FebruaryNow with 8 buds and doing fantastic
It likes where it is at the moment, and thats where it will stay much to the wife s displeasure, she’ll get over it.
First of the blooms looking glorious
I also have a moon lamp that revolves magnetically on a pedestal. The light coming through the blinds looks as if there is a crescent moon being superimposed on it.
My moon lamp
On another subject i was out in the van yesterday and i parked up near a signal box to grab a quick snack and a drink. I had the window down, it was a mild spring day with plenty of sunlight and i began to eat my sandwich. I was thinking to myself, “Dave you are making a lot of noise, eating” and then i looked to the side of me and saw this glorious beast staring at me eating some hay.
Highland cattle
How the hell I didn’t see this massive fellah is a mystery, he was well camouflaged and busy doing the same as me. Anyway I didn’t hang around too long as i was busy and he was also giving me some strange looks.
Can’t get to turn on unfortunately. No battery cover. Any questions please ask
EBay
Dirty unit No battery cover
I know, there is no battery cover, however I have already sourced a seller of one if needed. This item looks quite dirty so a good soak might be the order of the day to get started. I’ll wait for its arrival before I jump to order any other bits for it.
Now as I’ve said in the past these units fall into that crazy price category on the selling platforms as the “New Antiques” of today. For an item that was low cost, somewhere between £25-40GBP when it came on the market, they can certainly command a wide range of crazy prices, here is an example of price ranges from today:
The massive range in prices for these units
This one I purchased today only came up for sale about 3 hrs ago and I thought it would have been snapped up by now, it hadn’t so I didn’t hang around any longer and purchased it for a total of £16:38GBP including its delivery. I’m not going to get too smug yet, as for all I know I may have just purchased an empty shell. Let’s wait until it arrives.
Here’s a little history of this unit:
Grandstand “Invader from Space” is a tabletop LED game dating back 45 years to 1980. Four ‘AA’ batteries power the unit or, alternatively, the Grandstand 5.5V@300mA power adapter (or an equivalent power pack) sold separately. The game, licensed to Grandstand, is a copy of Epoch’s “Invader from Space”
The company initially behind the “Grandstand” label was Adam Imports Ltd., (from 1980 Adam Leisure Group Ltd. and by 1983 Adam Leisure Group PLC) founded in 1973 by Chris Rycroft and Les Kenyon of Harrogate, UK. The company initially started as a mail order company and was the single largest supplier of calculators in the UK by 1974. By August 1978, George Bassett had acquired a 75% holding in the capital of Adam Imports for £750,000 cash, plus 60p in the pound of profits before tax in excess of £500,000 for year to December 31, 1978. Adam Imports was re-acquired from George Bassett by Chris Rycroft in 1980. It chiefly imported electronic products from other manufacturers such as VTech, Epoch, Tomy & Entex, selling them in the UK re-branded under the Grandstand name.
Wikipedia and others
So that’s the history
There is a good link to a similar repair on YouTube from a guy I follow named Stez Stix Fix, it’s very much worth a look and he has a great if not sometimes crazy way of diagnosing and repairing items. A cool guy though.
The Grandstand invaders from space game
Anyway back to my own purchase.
Assessment:
I must admit the unit doesn’t look as dirty as in the original pictures. The battery cover is missing and there is a crack in the side and a deep scar at the bottom, this won’t be too much of an issue if I can weld it all back together. I will still give it a good soak to clean it all up though. I’ve put four batteries in place, and the unit is definitely dead. There are no loose wires, voltages are getting around the board according to the multimeter and nothing is getting hot. There appears to be no short circuits, and then I notice this, capacitor CO7, slight bulge on top and what looks like leakage from the bottom. We have a candidate as to why this unit is not working.
CO7 looking unhealthy to me, you can see the component to the left that looks like it’s covered in a fur ball. The result of the old capacitor “coughing”
I’ll whip this out and see what we have but I suspect this old capacitor has failed and is causing an issue, heres hoping I have a suitable replacement.
Repair:
This little beast is a 330uf 10v electrolytic capacitor. I have none available so have had to purchase a pack of ten. These should be here in the next few days. There are three other old electrolytic capacitors that I will also change whilst I’m in there, as these are all likely to fail at some point soon. These components are now all around 45 years old, it’s a wise move to change them out.
One very dead capacitor removed.
I’ve ordered a 3D printed battery cover to replace the one that is missing. This should be here in a couple of weeks.
Whilst waiting I have cleaned the inside and outside of the casing as best I can. I still have a piece of broken surround to repair, however this is just a simple glue and a little bit of support job.
Case inside and out cleaned
Broken surround repaired
The surround that was broken has been repaired and secured with some nylon soaked in a superglue compound inside the casing. It’s rock solid. Outside the break is hardly noticeable. The break is secure and much stronger now.
New capacitor here
I’ve replaced all the offending capacitors and the unit remains dead. I’ve reflowed most of the board as there were some dry solder joints. I’ve also rewired the bridge from the control panel to the main board as one of the wires here had broken.
Bridge required resoldering
After using the multimeter to check some traces and components it’s now pointing to this component (a power transistor D882) being the cause of this catastrophic breakdown as its readings are all over the place. I suspect this item has overheated, the capacitor has blown and then it’s just died itself. I’m probably wrong, but I know what I mean. Probably just a catastrophic chain of events that all contributed to the units demise.
D882 transistor – power regulator
And as usual I have none available so will have to send for some new ones. The new components have arrived and the new power transistor has taken its place on the board. Now reassembled I place some new batteries in and the unit comes to life. It was the power transistor at fault, I should have really checked here first after seeing that damaged capacitor at the beginning.
All old components removed and replaced in this unit
Not to worry though as it’s had a good overhaul and has been totally recapped as a precaution. I’ve used some conformal coating on a few tracks that had some copper exposed after a good clean, to ensure they don’t deteriorate any further.
It has life
The unit is looking really good and these items were traditionally very loud and this certainly is. It’s working well just as it should do and I’m exceptionally happy with this repair. I’m still awaiting the battery cover that I have had 3D printed and this should be here in the next week to complete the fix.
No scoreHere we go3D printed cover arrived. Minor adjustments needed but in all a good purchase
So with that I will bring this build to a conclusion. It has been a fun project, I’ve learned a number of things about this circuit board and gained valuable knowledge.
But best of all we have rescued another item and saved it from landfill.
Here in Leicestershire we have a number of places that I particularly like to visit. I’ll put two of them here…cos I can 👌
When you think of the city of Leicester you don’t really associate it with space travel. But don’t be fooled! We have the country’s national space centre, and for adults and children it is a fantastic day out if you have an interest in space exploration. They have many activities there, a fantastic collection of rockets, moon rock, and exhibits that you can get involved with. Heck I’ve even met a couple of astronauts there the last being Don Thomas who was a scientist on board a number of space shuttle missions.
Astronaut Don Thomas – Taken at the National space centre in Leicester.
Secondly you can’t go wrong with a visit to Leicester cathedral. You may have read that a few years ago archaeologists unearthed the remains of King Richard III in a carpark in Leicester. Well he is now interred in the cathedral alongside a visitors centre that gives the whole story regarding the last Plantagenet King of England. And it’s a beautiful quiet place of reflection.
King Richard IIILeicester cathedral
The city is pretty much like every city in the UK and has its good and bad points, urban decay is kind of getting more prominent as the investment declines. Here’s hoping the tide turns before it gets too bad.
There are a few historical events that have featured throughout my life so far, there are some such as the Apollo 11 landing, I guess I must have watched it if we had a tv then, however I’d have only been a few years old so I don’t quite remember it.
I remember the first shuttle launch in April 1981, I was at work and bunked off for about 30 mins with half the workers there to watch it on the company TV.
I’ve witnessed many high profile weddings and funerals, prison releases and successful / non successful legal cases. The one thing that really sticks out is the 9/11 attack in September 2001. We had only been there 9 months earlier and we had even seen the remnants of the last attempt when someone had attempted to detonate a car or lorry bomb at the foot of one of the buildings.
Of course for all of these memorable and historical occasions you did one thing, you collected the headline news papers of the day and I still have a number of these stored away in my home. I used to even have a copy of a paper that was issued the day the Titanic was sunk, this was my fathers and I used to take it to school for show and tell, this however disappeared when he passed away. I suspect it was foolishly recycled or disposed of.
Buying the newspaper today just doesn’t really occur as the news in its majority is now online. We’ve kind of lost a traditional way to pass on these nuggets of history as we used to do in the past.
For me the most memorable holiday I’ve ever had was in Florida the date was 16th September 1996.
STS-79 Atlantis. Photo NASA
That was the date I was at KSC to see the launch of STS-79 the space shuttle Atlantis as it lifted off to dock with the Russian space station MIR.
Space shuttle display KSCPad 39A KSCMission badge
A beautiful day and one of the most unbelievable sights you will ever observe when a mighty, rocket propelled machine fights to break free of the confines of earths gravity on the way to space.
I’ll never forget it, it was one of those moments that is etched in the memory for life.
In my job I’m a jack of all trades and master of none. I’m just someone who is there to organise a response when the dirt hits the fan.
However, ask me about aircraft and rocket technology and I’m your man.
It’s good that most of the youngsters in the family will turn to uncle Dave when there is a technical question, and I like that. It’s good to see the concentration on their faces as I’m explaining things to them.
In fact I’m quite an authority on irrelevant and pointless facts as well.
Foxes Den 
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