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Bit of a scoop here... I seem to have stumbled across a bit of a Novak servo haul.

I have been on the lookout for a Novak NES-1A servo for my Demon MF-1 1/12th build and nothing much has come up for a while..... then out of the blue a couple of days ago i received a message from a friend of mine who has sold me quite a few nice goodies in the past. He was a team Reedy driver and raced at a European and Worlds level and as such got to play with all of the good stuff.

He initially messaged me offering me a heap of unused motor brushes in various formats, then three old-school 'heatshrink era' esc examples (one looks to be an early Intronics, one a Laser, but the third one i have no idea....)

Then this picture landed.... it transpires he was also sponsored by Novak during his early 1/12th days.

I count about 9 NES-1A cases there, three of which are still in one piece. There are also multiple inner gubbins parts and wires and an NER-2S receiver.

What is of real interest though is the red example with the wiper, which i immediately asked him about. He told me that when he was running for Novak he was asked about his colour scheme for the car and was then sent a red example and also a clearish-white one.

I am aware that Kent Clausen had a bespoke white case and wiring to match his car, so it appears as though this was from the same batch
I am still waiting for these to arrive but will have a good sort through and post up exactly what I have actually got my hands on

Wow that white servo is a very cool find.

I figured the white case would be just a Bantam case but it’s definitely different. Very cool!

Although Johns had one listed for sale not too long ago… dang! Someone scored for $15

GoMachV wrote: ↑Thu Mar 03, 2022 3:25 pm Although Johns had one listed for sale not too long ago… dang! Someone scored for $15

Now they just have to gut a $200 servo.

I actually kinda like the red one!! I am hoping to get a decent number of functioning NES-1A's out of that box if possible. Pretty chuffed

dinglem wrote: ↑Wed Mar 02, 2022 6:46 pm 'heatshrink era' esc

Was this purely for weight and space saving, or manufacturing difficulties?

Dirtburner wrote: ↑Thu Mar 03, 2022 7:37 pm

dinglem wrote: ↑Wed Mar 02, 2022 6:46 pm 'heatshrink era' esc

Was this purely for weight and space saving, or manufacturing difficulties?

I believe weight saving and a little of prototype testing.
Masami always shrink wrapped in his early days.

The UK ESC scene was very much a cottage industry, with manufacturers turning out their products from garden sheds in the early days. Nick Adams of Demon started out in 1979 and was making his early electronic, non-FET units from 1980, shifting to the Big Devil and Little Devil FET units at some point in 1984 (earliest dated example of these i have seen is from week 9 of 1985, although I have only ever seen two...) I do however have access to the original design drawings and PCB scans for the Big and Little Devils, both of which are dated 1984, as is the actually stamping on the base of the PCB itself.

I certainly do not recall seeing anything cased like Novak esc's or anything other than the Futaba 112B during my early UK racing days from 86 or 87 onwards. I am not too sure when imports began, and i suppose the top UK drivers who were getting into the UK mag tech charts steered what the club racer wanted to run in his car. Everybody who was anybody in the UK scene was running heatshrink-wrapped Demons, Nosrams and the like. Jamie Booth, Rory Cull and Ian Oddie for example.... i am also aware that the off-the-shelf examples all ran with BUZ11 FETs, whereas some of the later team units were actually built with SMP50N05 FETs, so not exactly a level playing field when it came to tech chart advertising.

I gather Sid Girdwood developed his Touchtronics VF4, VF6, VF8 and VF10 FET speedo range from 1984 (VF standing for 'V-FET'), although there is much discussion as to who did this first in the UK. I myself have a VF8 and it is very very small compared to the other offerings from that period. I know a racer by the name of Scott Morton who was running Touchtronics V-FET esc's in the 1984 season. The Novak NESC-1 was released in 1985 according to the Novak timeline.

I guess as these were essentially home made items the tooling costs of making plastic cases were not economically viable, especially when heatshrink covers were smaller, lighter and cheaper, whilst still providing probably the same degree of waterproofing.

There is plenty of nostalgia in this era for me, and I have quite a collection of heatshrink-wrapped esc's now. Mainly Demon, Nosram, Laser, Touchtronics and the like.

I should also probably add that the Novak timeline also states 'Electronic speed controls make their first World Championship appearance at the 1985 Off-Road Worlds, with both Jay Halsey and Gil Losi Jr using them to capture world titles.'

In fact, my mate Jimmy Davis (who incidentally is the guy who has sold me these Novak servos) actually used a Demon 2 in the 1982 1/12th scale worlds A-final, qualifying for both Stock and Modified A-finals and being the only driver there using an ESC.

I imagine as these early non-FET esc's had no cases as such - some actually had a metal case or partial plates - and were only protected by heatshrink as they were only getting 1/12th use, then this theme carried over into the early FET esc units which then moved into off-road use as the buggy scene took off.

Novak's timeline isn't complete since they had at least one ESC before the NESC-1.

https://www.rc10talk.com/viewtopic.php?f=78&t=43106


I expect you'll end up finding an example of one at some point.

Oh wow.... R/C archaeology right there!

You have immediately got my interest with that thread, which I had not previously seen. It also got me looking a little more closely at the blue heatshrink-wrapped ESC pictured above as although Jimmy has told me it was Intronics, the Intronics guys themselves have been hard-pushed to ID it as one of their own.... i need to actually get my hands on it to have a good look around it.

I have just messaged Jimmy to ask him about the early Novak offerings shown in those grainy photographs. Hopefully he may recall something....

This is how they ended up when i sorted through the box. Quite a nice lot considering. i have sent some of these off to be built back up into (hopefully) functioning units again. There were loads of misc NES-1A servo parts in the box, motors, gears and general internal gubbins. Nice to have so many parts to choose from anyway.
There was also a really cool and interesting sticker sheet included in the stuff which i think justifies another thread - I will post that up now.